LIBRARY 
Nivwsrrr  o* 

CAUFORNtA 
SAN  DIEGO 


Jfamous  COomeiu 


GEORGE    SAND. 


The  next  volumes  in  the  Famous  Women  Series 
•will  be: 

MARGARET  FULLER.     By  Julia  Ward  Howe.' 
MARIA  EDGEWORTH.     By  Miss  Zimmern. 

Already  published : 

GEORGE  ELIOT.     By  Miss  Blind. 
EMILY  BRONTE.     By  Miss  Robinson. 
GEORGE  SAND.     By  Miss  Thomas. 
MARY  LAMB.     By  Mrs.  Gilchrist. 


GEORGE  SAND. 


BY 


BERTHA    THOMAS. 


BOSTON: 
ROBERTS     BROTHERS. 

1883. 


Copyright,  1S8S, 
BY  ROBERTS  BROTHERS. 


UNIVERSITY  PRESS: 
JOHN  WILSON  AND  SON,  CAMBRIDGE. 


PREFATORY  NOTE. 


THE  authentic  materials  available  for  an  account 
of  the  life  of  George  Sand,  although  lately  in- 
creased by  the  publication  of  a  large  part  of 
her  correspondence,  are  still  incomplete.  Her 
memoirs  by  her  own  hand,  dealing  fully  with 
her  early  life  alone,  remain  unsupplemented  by 
any  entire  and  detailed  biography,  for  which, 
indeed,  the  time  seems  hardly  yet  come. 
Hence  one  among  many  obvious  difficulties  in 
the  way  of  this  attempt  to  prepare  for  English 
readers  a  brief  sketch  that  shall  at  least  indi- 
cate all  the  more  salient  features  of  a  life  of 
singularly  varied  aspect. 

Much,  though  of  interest  in  itself,  must  here 
be  omitted,  as  beyond  the  scope  of  the  present 
study.  There  are  points  again  into  which,  as 
touching  persons  still  living  or  quite  recently 


VI  PREFATORY  NOTE. 

deceased,  it  would  be  premature  to  enter.  But 
none  seem  of  such  importance  as  to  forbid  the 
endeavor,  by  a  careful  review  of  those  facts  in 
the  life  of  George  Sand  which  most  justly  repre- 
sent her  character  as  a  whole,  and  were  the 
determining  influences  on  her  career  and  on 
her  work,  to  arrive  at  truth  and  completeness 
of  general  outline,  the  utmost  it  is  possible  to 
hope  to  accomplish  in  this  little  volume. 

BERTHA  THOMAS. 


CONTENTS. 


CHAPTER  I. 

rAGB. 

EARLY  YEARS i 

CHAPTER  II. 
GIRLHOOD  AND  MARRIED  LIFE    ....        29 

CHAPTER  III. 
DEBUT  IN  LITERATURE 54 

CHAPTER  IV. 
LELIA  —  ITALIAN  JOURNEY 79 

CHAPTER  V. 
MENTAL  DEVELOPMENT 104 

CHAPTER  VI. 
SOLITUDE,  SOCIETY  AND  SOCIALISM    .        .        .127 


Vl  il  CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER  VII. 

FACE. 

CONSUELO  —  HOME  LIFE  AT  NOHANT         .        .       149 

CHAPTER  VIII. 
NOVELIST  AND  POLITICIAN 170 

CHAPTER  IX. 
PASTORAL  TALES 192 

CHAPTER  X. 
PLAYS  AND  LATER  NOVELS 213 

CHAPTER  XI. 
ARTIST  AND  MORALIST 238 

CHAPTER  XII. 
LATER  YEARS 256 


GEORGE   SAND. 


CHAPTER   I. 

EARLY    YEARS. 

IN  naming  George  Sand  we  name  something 
more  exceptional  than  even  a  great  genius.  Her 
-ise  to  eminence  in  the  literature  of  her  century, 
s,  if  not  without  a  parallel,  yet  absolutely  with- 
»ut  a  precedent,  in  the  annals  of  women  of 
nodern  times. 

The  origin  of  much  that  is  distinctive  in  the 
story  of  her  life  may  be  traced  in  the  curious 
story  of  her  lineage. 

George  Sand  was  of  mixed  national  descent, 
and  in  her  veins  ran  the  blood  of  heroes  and  of 
kings.  The  noble  and  the  artist,  the  bourgeoisie 
and  the  people,  all  had  their  representa- 
tives among  their  immediate  ancestors.  Her 
grandmother,  the  guardian  of  her  girlhood,  was 
the  child  of  Maurice,  Marshal  Saxe,  that  favor- 
ite figure  in  history  and  romance,  himself  son 
of  the  famous  Augustus  II.,  Elector  of  Saxony, 


2  GEORGE    SAND. 

and  King  of  Poland,  and  the  Swedish  Countess 
Aurora  von  Konigsmark.  The  Marshal's 
daughter  Aurore,  though  like  her  father  of  ille- 
gitimate birth  —  her  mother,  who  was  connected 
with  the  stage,  passed  by  her  professional  name 
of  Mile.  Verrieres  —  obtained  after  the  Mar- 
shal's death  the  acknowledgment  and  protection 
of  his  relatives  in  high  places,  notably  of  his 
niece,  the  Dauphin  of  France,  grand-daughter 
of  Augustus  of  Poland,  and  mother  of  the 
three  kings  —  Louis  XVI.,  Louis  XVIII.,  and 
Charles  X. 

Carefully  educated  at  St.  Cyr,  Mile,  de  Saxe 
was  married,  when  little  more  than  a  child,  to 
the  Count  de  Horn,  who  was  also  of  partly 
royal  but  irregular  origin.  He  very  shortly 
afterward  fell  in  a  duel.  His  widow,  at  thirty, 
became  the  wife  of  M.  Dupin  de  Francueil,  an 
old  gentleman  of  good  provincial  family  and 
some  fortune.  Maurice,  their  only  child,  was 
the  father  of  George  Sand. 

Madame  Dupin  (the  suffix  de  Franceuil  was 
afterwards  dropped  by  her  husband )  appears  to 
have  inherited  none  of  the  adventurous  and 
erratic  tendencies  of  her  progenitors.  Aristo- 
cratic in  her  sympathies,  philosophic  in  her 
intellect,  and  strictly  decorous  in  her  conduct, 
throughout  the  whole  of  her  long  and  checkered 
life  she  was  regarded  with  respect.  Left  a 


EARLY    YEARS.  3 

widow  again,  ten  years  after  her  second  mar- 
riage, she  concentrated  her  hopes  and  affections 
on  her  handsome  and  amiable  son  Maurice. 
Though  fondly  attached  to  her,  he  was  yet  to  be 
the  cause  of  her  heaviest  sorrows,  by  his  more 
than  hazardous  marriage,  and  by  his  premature 
and  tragical  fate.  . 

His  strongest  natural  leanings  seem  to  have 
been  towards  art  in  general,  music  and  the 
drama  in  particular,  and  of  his  facile,  buoyant, 
artist  temperament  there  is  ample  evidence ; 
but  the  political  conditions  of  France  under  the 
Directory  in  1798  left  him  no  choice  but  to 
enter  the  army,  where  he  served  under  Dupont, 
winning  his  commission  on  the  field  of  Marengo 
in  1800.  It  was  during  this  Italian  campaign 
that  the  young  officer  met  with  the  woman 
who,  four  years  later,  became  his  wife,  and  the 
mother  of  his  illustrious  child. 

Mademoiselle  Sophie  Victorie  Delaborde, 
was,  emphatically  speaking,  a  daughter  of  the 
people.  Her  father  had  been  a  poor  bird-seller 
at  Paris,  where  she  herself  had  worked  as  a 
milliner.  Left  unprotected  at  a  very  early  age, 
thoroughly  uneducated  and  undisciplined,  gifted 
with  considerable  beauty,  and  thrown  on  the 
world  at  a  time  when  the  very  foundations  of 
society  seemed  to  be  collapsing,  she  had  been 
exposed  to  extreme  dangers,  and  without  any  of 


4  GEORGE    SAND. 

the  ordinary  safeguards  against  them.  That 
she  proved  herself  not  undeserving  of  the  seri- 
ous attachment  with  which  she  inspired  Maurice 
Dupin,  her  least  favorable  judges  were  after- 
wards forced  to  admit  ;  though,  at  the  time  this 
infatuation  of  the  lieutenant  of  six-and-twenty 
for  one  four  years  his  senior,  and  of  the  hum- 
blest extraction,  and  whose  life  hitherto  had  not 
been  blameless,  was  naturally  regarded  as 
utterly  disastrous  by  his  elders. 

The  devoted  pair  were  married  secretly  at 
Paris  in  1804 ;  and  on  the  5th  of  July  in  the  same 
year  —  the  last  of  the  French  Republic  and  the 
first  of  the  Empire  —  their  daughter  entered  the 
world,  receiving  the  name  of  Amantine-Lucile- 
Aurore. 

The  discovery  of  the  mesalliance  she  had  been 
dreading  for  some  time,  and  which  her  son  had 
not  dared  to  confess  to  her,  was  a  heavy  blow 
to  old  Madame  Dupin.  However,  she  schooled 
herself  to  forgive  what  was  irrevocable,  and  to 
acknowledge  this  most  unwelcome  daughter-in- 
law,  the  infant  Aurore  helping  unconsciously  to 
effect  the  reconciliation.  But  for  more  than 
three  years  M.  Dupin's  mother  and  his  wife 
scarcely  ever  met.  Madame  Dupin  mere  was 
living  in  a  retired  part  of  the  country,  in  the 
very  centre  of  France,  on  the  little  property  of 
Nohant,  which  she  had  bought  with  what  the 


EARLY    YEARS.  .      5 

Revolution  had  left  her  out  of  her  late  hus- 
band's fortune.  Maurice,  now  Captain  Dupin 
and  aide-de-camp  to  Murat,  resided,  when 
not  on  service,  in  Paris,  where  he  had 
settled  with  his  wife  and  child.  The 
union,  strange  though  it  may  seem,  continued 
to  be  a  happy  one.  Besides  a  strong  attach- 
ment there  existed  a  real  conformity  of  dis- 
position between  the  two.  The  mother  of 
George  Sand  was  also,  in  her  way,  a  remarkable 
woman.  She  has  been  described  by  her  daugh- 
ter as  "  a  great  artist  lost  for  want  of  develop- 
ment "  ;  showing  a  wonderful  dexterity  in  what- 
ever she  put  her  hand  to,  no  matter  if  practiced 
in  it  or  not.  "  She  tried  everything,  and  always 
succeeded  "—sewing,  drawing,  tuning  the  piano 
— "  she  would  have  made  shoes,  locks,  furniture, 
had  it  been  necessary."  But  her  tastes  were 
simple  and  domestic.  Though  married  out  of 
her  rank,  she  was  entirely  without  any  vain 
ambition  to  push  herself  into  fashionable  so- 
ciety, the  constraint  of  which,  moreover,  she 
could  not  bear.  "  She  was  a  woman  for  the 
fire-side,  or  for  quick,  merry  walks  and  drives. 
But  in  the  house  or  out  of  doors,  what  she 
wanted  was  intimacy  and  confidence,  complete 
sincerity  in  her  relations  with  those  around  her, 
absolute  liberty  in  her  habits  and  the  disposal 
of  her  time.  She  always  led  a  retired  life,  more 


6  GEORGE    SAND. 

anxious  to  keep  aloof  from  tiresome  acquain- 
tance than  to  seek  such  as  might  be  advan- 
tageous. That  was  just  the  foundation  of  my 
father's  character  ;  and  in  this  respect  never  was 
there  a  better-assorted  couple.  They  could 
never  be  happy  except  in  their  own  little 
menage.  Everywhere  out  of  it  they  had  to 
stifle  their  melancholy  yawns,  and  they  have 
transmitted  to  me  that  secret  shyness  which  has 
always  made  the  gay  world  intolerable,  and 
home  a  necessity  to  me." 

In  a  modest  bourgeois  habitation  in  the  Rue 
Meslay,  afterwards  transferred  to  the  Rue 
Grange-Bateliere,  Aurore  Dupin's  infancy  passed 
tranquilly  away,  under  the  wing  of  her  warmly 
affectionate  mother  who,  though  utterly  illiter- 
ate, showed  intuitive  tact  and  skill  in  fostering 
the  child's  intelligence.  "Mine,"  says  her 
daughter,  "  made  no  resistance ;  but  was  never 
beforehand  with  anything,  and  might  have 
been  very  much  behindhand  if  left  to  itself." 

Aurore  was  not  four  years  old  when  adven- 
tures began  for  her  in  earnest.  In  the  spring 
of  1808,  her  father  was  at  Madrid,  in  atten- 
dance upon  Murat  ;  and  Madame  Maurice 
Dupin,  becoming  impatient  of  prolonged  sepa- 
ration from  her  husband,  started  off  with  her 
little  girl  to  join  him.  The  hazards  and  hard- 
ships of  the  expedition,  long  mountain  drives 


EARLY    YEARS.  7 

and  wild  scenery,  strange  fare  and  strange 
sights,  could  not  fail  vividly  to  impress  the 
child,  whose  imagination  from  her  cradle  was 
extraordinarily  active.  Her  mother  ere  this 
had  discovered  that  Aurore,  then  little  more 
than  a  baby,  and  pent  up  within  four  chairs  to 
keep  her  out  of  harm's  way,  would  make  her- 
self perfectly  happy,  plucking  at  the  basket- 
work  and  babbling  endless  fairy  tales  to  her- 
self, confused  and  diluted  versions  of  the  first 
fictions  narrated  to  her.  A  picturesque  line  in 
a  nursery  song  was  enough  to  bring  before  her 
a  world  of  charming  wonders ;  the  figures, 
birds,  and  flowers  on  a  Sevres  china  candela- 
brum would  call  up  enchanting  landscapes  ;  and 
the  sound  of  a  flageolet  played  from  some  dis- 
tant attic  start  a  train  of  melodious  fancies  and 
throw  her  into  musical  raptures.  Her  daily 
experiences,  after  reaching  Madrid  with  her 
mother,  continued  to  be  novel  and  exciting  in 
the  extreme.  The  palace  of  the  Prince  de  la 
Paix,  where  Murat  and  his  suite  had  their 
quarters,  was  to  her  the  realization  of  the 
wonder-land  of  Perrault  and  d'Aulnoy ;  Murat, 
the  veritable  Prince  Fanfarinet.  She  was  pre- 
sented to  him  in  a  fancy  court-dress,  devised  for 
the  occasion  by  her  mother,  an  exact  imitation 
of  her  father's  uniform  in  miniature,  with  spurs, 
sword,  and  boots,  all  complete.  The  Prince 


8  GEORGE    SAND. 

was  amused  by  the  jest,  and  took  a  fancy  to  the 
child,  calling  her  his  little  aide-de-camp.  After 
a  residence  of  several  weeks  in  this  abode,  whose 
splendor  was  alloyed  by  not  a  little  discomfort 
and  squalor,  the  return-journey  had  to  be  accom- 
plished in  the  height  of  summer,  amid  every 
sort  of  risk ;  past  reeking  battle-fields,  camps, 
sacked  and  half-burnt  villages  and  beleaguered 
cities.  Captain  Dupin  succeeded,  however,  in 
escorting  his  family  safely  back  into  France 
again,  the  party  halting  to  recruit  awhile  under 
his  mother's  roof. 

Nohant,  a  spot  that  has  become  as  famous 
through  its  associations  as  Abbotsford,  lies 
about  three  miles  from  the  little  town  of  La 
Chatre,  in  the  department  of  the  Indre,  part  of 
the  old  province  of  Berry.  The  manor  is  a 
plain  gray  house  with  steep  mansard  roofs,  of 
the  time  of  Louis  XVI.  It  stands  just  apart 
from  the  road,  shaded  by  trees,  beside  a  pleasure 
ground  of  no  vast  extent,  but  with  its  large 
flower-garden  and  little  wood  allowed  to  spread 
at  nature's  bidding,  quite  in  the  English  style. 
Behind  the  house  cluster  a  score  of  cottages  of 
the  scattered  hamlet  of  Nohant ;  in  the  centre 
rises  the  smallest  of  churches,  with  a  tiny 
cemetery  hedged  around  and  adjoining  the  wall 
of  the  manor  garden. 

At   this   country   home  the   tired   travellers 


EARLY     YEARS.  9 

gladly  alighted  ;  but  they  had  barely  a  few  weeks 
in  which  to  recover  from  the  fatigues  of  their 
Spanish  campaign,  when  a  terrible  calamity 
overwhelmed  the  household.  Maurice  Dupin, 
riding  home  one  night  from  La  Chatre,  was 
thrown  from  his  horse  and  killed  on  the  spot. 

The  story  of  Aurore  Dupin's  individual  life 
opens  at  once  with  the  death  of  her  father  —  a 
loss  she  was  still  too  young  to  comprehend,  but 
for  which  she  was  soon  to  suffer  through  the 
strange,  the  anomalous  position,  in  which  it  wag 
to  place  her.  Maurice  Dupin's  patrician  mother 
and  her  plebeian  daughter-in-law,  bereft  thus 
violently  of  him  who  had  been  the  only  possible 
link  between  them,  found  themselves  hope- 
lessly, actively,  and  increasingly  at  variance. 
Their  tempers  clashed,  their  natures  were  anti- 
pathetic, their  views  contradictory,  their  posi- 
tions irreconcilable.  Aurore  was  not  only 
thrust  into  an  atmosphere  of  strife,  but  con- 
demned to  the  apple  of  discord.  She  was  to 
grow  up  between  two  hostile  camps,  each  claim- 
ing her  obedience  and  affection. 

The  beginning  was  smooth,  and  the  sadness 
which  alone  kept  the  peace  was  not  allowed  to 
weigh  on  the  child.  She  ran  wild  in  the  gar- 
den, the  country  air  and  country  life  strength- 
ening a  naturally  strong  constitution  ;  and  her 
intelligence,  though  also  allowed  much  freedom 


10  GEORGE    SAA'D. 

in  its  development,  was  not  neglected.  A  pre- 
ceptor was  on  the  spot  in  the  person  of  the 
fourth  inmate  of  Nohant,  an  old  pedagogue, 
Deschartres  by  name,  formerly  her  father's 
tutor,  who  had  remained  in  Madame  Dupin's 
service  as  "intendant."  The  serio-comic  figure 
of  this  personage,  so  graphically  drawn  by 
George  Sand  herself  in  the  memoirs  of  her 
early  life,  will  never  be  forgotten  by  any  reader 
of  those  reminiscences.  Pedant,  she  says,  was 
written  in  every  line  of  his  countenance  and 
every  movement  that  he  made.  He  was  pos- 
sessed of  some  varied  learning,  much  narrow 
prejudice,  and  a  violent,  crotchety  temper,  but 
had  proved  during  the  troubles  of  the  Revolu- 
tion his  sincere  and  disinterested  devotion  to 
the  family  he  served,  and  Aurore  and  "the 
great  man,"  as  she  afterwards  nicknamed  her 
old  tutor,  were  always  good  friends. 

Before  she  was  four  years  old  she  could  read 
quite  well ;  but  she  remarks  that  it  was  only 
after  learning  to  write  that  what  she  read  be- 
gan to  take  a  definite  meaning  for  her.  The 
fairy-tales  perused  but  half  intelligently  before 
were  re-read  with  a  new  delight.  She  learnt 
grammar  with  Deschartres,  and  from  her  grand- 
mother took  her  first  lessons  in  music,  an  art  of 
which  she  became  passionately  fond  ;  and  it 
always  remained  for  her  a  favourite  source  of 


EARLY    YEARS.  II 

enjoyment,  though  she  never  acquired  much 
proficiency  as  a  musical  performer.  The  edu- 
cational doctrines  of  Rousseau  had  then 
brought  into  fashion  a  regime  of  open-air  exer- 
cise and  freedom  for  the  young,  such  as  we 
commonly  associate  with  English,  rather  than 
French,  child-life  ;  and  Aurore's  early  years  — 
when  domestic  hostilities  and  nursery  tyran- 
nies, from  which,  like  most  sensitive  children, 
she  suffered  inordinately,  were  suspended  — 
were  passed  in  the  careless,  healthy  fashion 
approved  in  this  country..  A  girl  of  her  own 
age,  but  of  lower  degree,  was  taken  into  the 
house  to  share  her  studies  and  pastimes.  Little 
Ursule  was  to  become,  in  later  years,  the  faith- 
ful servant  of  her  present  companion,  who  had 
then  become  lady  of  the  manor,  and  who  never 
lost  sight  of  this  humble  friend.  Aurore  had 
also  a  boy  playmate  in  a  protegd  of  her  grand- 
mother's, five  years  her  senior,  who  patronised 
and  persecuted  her  by  turns,  in  his  true  fra- 
ternal fashion.  This  boy,  Hippolyte,  the  son  of 
a  woman  of  low  station,  was  in  fact  Aurore's 
half-brother,  adopted  from  his  birth  and  brought 
up  by  Madame  Dupin  the  elder,  whose  indul- 
gence, where  her  son  was  concerned,  was  ki- 
finite.  With  these,  ^and  the  children  of  the 
farm-tenants  and  rural  proprietors  around, 
Aurore  did  not  want  for  companions.  But  the 


12  GEORGE    SAND. 

moment  soon  arrived  when  the  painful  family 
dispute  of  which  she  was  the  object,  was  to  be- 
come the  cause  of  more  distress  to  the  child 
than  to  her  elders.  There  were  reasons  which 
stood  in  the  way  of  Madame  Maurice  Dupin's 
fixing  her  residence  permanently  under  her 
mother-in-law's  roof.  But  the  mind  of  the  latter 
was  set  on  obtaining  the  guardianship  of  her 
grand-daughter,  the  natural  heir  to  her  prop- 
erty, and  on  thus  assuring  to  her  social  and 
educational  privileges  of  a  superior  order.  The 
child's  heart  declared  unreservedly  for  her 
mother,  whose  passionate  fondness  she  re- 
turned with  the  added  tenderness  of  a  deeper 
nature,  and  all  attempts  to  estrange  the  two 
had  only  drawn  them  closer  together.  But  the 
pecuniary  resources  of  Maurice  Dupin's  widow 
were  of  the  smallest,  and  the  advantages  offered 
to  her  little  girl  by  the  proposed  arrangement 
so  material,  that  the  older  lady  gained  her 
point  in  the  end.  Madame  Maurice  settled  in 
Paris.  Aurore  grew  up  her  grandmother's 
ward,  with  Nohant  for  her  home  ;  a  home  she 
was  to  keep,  knowing  no  other,  till  the  end  of 
her  life. 

The  separation  was  brought  about  very 
gradually  to  the  child.  The  first  few  winters 
were  spent  in  Paris,  where  her  grandmother 
had  an  establishment.  Then  she  could  pass 


EARLY    YEARS.  13 

whole  days  with  her  mother,  who,  in  turn,  spent 
summers  at  Nohant,  and  Aurore  for  years  was 
buoyed  up  by  the  hope  that  a  permanent  re- 
union would  still  be  brought  about.  But  mean- 
time domestic  jealousy  and  strife,  inflamed  by 
the  unprincipled  meddling  of  servants,  raged 
more  fiercely  than  ever,  and  could  not  but  be  a 
source  of  more  than  ordinary  childish  misery  to 
their  innocent  object.  It  was  but  slowly  that 
she  became  attached  to  her  grandmother,  whose 
undemonstrative  temper,  formal  habits  and  con- 
descending airs  were  little  calculated  to  win 
over  her  young  affections,  or  fire  her  with  grati- 
tude for  the  anxiety  displayed  by  this  guardian 
to  form  her  manners  and  cultivate  her  intellect. 
Nay,  the  result  was  rather  to  implant  in  her  a 
premature  dislike  and  distrust  for  conventional 
ideals.  From  the  standard  of  culture  and  pro- 
priety, from  the  temptations  of  social  rank  and 
wealth  held  up  for  her  preference,  she  instinct- 
ively turned  to  the  simple,  unrestrained  affec- 
tion of  the  despised  mother,  and  the  greater 
freedom  and  expansion  enjoyed  in  such  com- 
pany. In  vain  did  disdainful  lady's-maids  try 
to  taunt  her  into  precocious  worldly  wisdom, 
asking  if  she  could  really  want  to  go  and  eat 
beans  in  a  little  garret.  Such  a  condition, 
naturally,  she  began  to  regard  as  the  equivalent 
of  a  noble  and  glorious  existence ! 


14  GEORGE    SAND, 

Meantime,  throughout  all  these  alternations 
of  content  and  distress,  Nohant  and  its  sur- 
roundings were  perforce  becoming  dear  to  her, 
as  only  the  home  of  our  childhood  can  ever  be- 
come. The  scenery  and  characteristics  of  that 
region  are  familiar  to  all  readers  of  the  works  of 
George  Sand  ;  a  quiet  region  of  narrow,  wind- 
ing, shady  lanes,  where  you  may  wander  long 
between  the  tall  hedges  without  meeting  a  liv- 
ing creature  but  the  wild  birds  that  start  from 
the  honey-suckle  and  hawthorn,  and  the  frogs 
croaking  among  the  sedges  ;  a  region  of  soft- 
flowing  rivers  with  curlew-haunted  reed  beds, 
and  fields  where  quails  cluck  in  the  furrows ; 
the  fertile  plain  studded  with  clumps  of  ash 
and  alder,  and  a  rare  farm  -  habitation  stand- 
ing amid  orchards  and  hemp  -  fields,  or  a 
rarer  hamlet  of  a  dozen  cottages  grouped 
together.  The  country  is  flat,  and,  viewed 
from  the  rail  or  high  road,  unimpressive. 
But  those  fruitful  fields  have  a  placid  beauty, 
and  it  needs  but  to  penetrate  the  sequestered 
lanes  and  explore  the  thicket-bound  courses  of 
the  streams,  to  meet  with  plenty  of  those  pleas- 
ant solitudes  after  a  poet's  own  heart,  whose  gift 
is  to  seize  and  perpetuate  transient  effects,  and 
to  open  the  eyes  of  duller  minds  to  charms  that 
might  pass  unnoticed.  In  this  sense  only  can 
George  Sand  be  said  to  have  idealized  for  us 
the  landscapes  she  loved. 


EARLY    YEARS.  15 

The  thoughtful,  poetic  side  of  her  tempera- 
ment showed  itself  early,  leading  her  to  s.eek 
long  intervals  of  solitude,  when  she  would  bury 
herself  in  books  or  dreams,  to  satisfy  the  crav- 
ings of  her  intellect  and  imagination.  On  the 
other  hand,  her  vigorous  physical  organization 
kept  alive  her  taste  for  active  amusements  and 
merry  companionship.  So  the  child-squire 
romped  on  equal  terms  with  the  little  rustics 
of  Nohant,  sharing  their  village  sports  and  the 
occupations  of  the  seasons  as  they  came  round : 
hay-making  and  gleaning  in  summer  ;  in  winter 
weaving  bird-nets  to  spread  in  the  snowy  fields 
for  the  wholesale  capture  of  larks  ;  anon  listen- 
ing with  mixed  terror  and  delight  to  the  pictur- 
esque legends  told  by  the  hemp-beaters,  as  they 
sat  at  their  work  out  of  doors  on  September 
moonlight  evenings  —  to  all  the  traditional 
ghost-stories  of  the  "Black  Valley,"  as  she 
fancifully  christened  the  country  round  about. 
Tales  were  these  of  fantastic  animals  and  gob- 
lins, the  grand' -bete  and  the  levrette  blanche, 
Georgeon,  that  imp  of  mischief,  night  appari- 
tions of  witches  and  charmers  of  wolves,  sing- 
ing Druidical  stones  and  mysterious  portents  — 
a  whole  fairy  mythology,  then  firmly  believed  in 
by  the  superstitious  peasantry. 

As  a  signal  contrast  to  this  way  of  life  came 
for  a  time  the  annual  visits  to  Paris  —  suspended 


1 6  GEORGE    SAND. 

after  she  was  ten  years  old.  There  liberty 
ended,  and  the  girl  was  transported  into  a  novel 
and  most  uncongenial  sphere.  Her  grand- 
mother's friends  and  relatives  were  mostly  old 
people,  who  clung  to  antiquated  modes  and 
customs ;  and  distinguished  though  such  circles 
might  be,  the  youngest  member  only  found  out 
that  they  were  intolerably  dull.  The  wrinkled 
countesses  with  their  elaborate  toilettes  and 
ceremonious  manners,  the  abbes  with  their  fash- 
ionable tittle-tattle  and  their  innumerable  snuff- 
boxes, the  long  dinners,  the  accomplishment- 
lessons,  notably  those  in  dancing  and  deport- 
ment, were  repugnant  to  the  soul  of  the  little 
hoyden.  She  made  amends  to  herself  by  observ- 
ing these  new  scenes  and  characters  narrowly, 
with  the  acute  natural  perception  that  was  one 
of  her  leading  gifts.  From  this  artificial  atmo- 
sphere of  constraint,  it  was  inevitable  that  she 
should  welcome  hours  of  escape  into  her 
mother's  unpretending  domestic  circle ;  and 
already  at  ten  years  old  she  had  pronounced 
the  lot  of  a  scullery-maid  enviable,  compared  to 
that  of  an  old  marquise. 

Nevertheless  the  fact  of  her  having,  at  an  age 
when  impressions  are  strongest,  and  most  last- 
ing, mixed  freely  and  on  equal  terms  with  the 
upper  classes  of  society,  was  a  point  in  her  edu- 
cation not  without  its  favorable  action  on  her 


EARLY   YEARS.  I/ 

afterwards  as  a  novelist.  Despite  her  firm  re- 
publican sympathies,  emphatic  disdain  for  mere 
rank  and  wealth,  and  her  small  mercy  for  the 
foibles  of  the  fashionable  world,  she  can  enter 
into  its  spirit,  paint  its  allurements  without 
exaggeration,  and  indicate  its  shortcomings  with 
none  of  that  asperity  of  the  outsider  which 
always  suggests  some  unconscious  envy  lurking 
behind  the  scorn. 

The  despised  accomplishment -lessons,  in 
themselves  tending  only  to  so  much  agree- 
able dabbling,  proved  useful  to  her  indirectly 
by  creating  new  interests,  and  as  an  intellect- 
ual stimulus.  There  seems  to  have  been  little 
or  no  method  about  her  early  education.  The 
study  of  her  own  language  was  neglected,  and 
the  time  spent  less  profitably,  she  considered  in 
acquiring  a  smattering  of  Latin  with  Deschar- 
tres.  She  took  to  some  studies  with  avidity, 
while  others  remained  wholly  distasteful  to  her. 
For  mere  head-work  she  cared  little.  Arithme- 
tic she  detested  ;  versification,  no  less.  Her 
imagination  rebelled  against  the  restrictions  of 
form.  Nowhere,  perhaps,  except  in  the  free- 
fantasia  style  of  the  novel,  could  this  great  prose- 
poet  have  found  the  right  field  in  which  to  do 
justice  to  her  powers.  The  dry  tecJmique  in 
music  was  a  stumbling-block  of  which  she  was 
impatient.  History  and  literature  she  enjoyed 


1 8  GEORGE   SAND. 

in  whatever  they  offered  that  was  romantic, 
heroic,  or  poetically  suggestive.  In  her  No- 
hant  surroundings  there  was  nothing  to  check, 
and  much  to  stimulate,  this  dominant,  imagin- 
ative faculty.  Her  youthful  attempts  at  original 
composition  she  quickly  discarded  in  disgust  ; 
but  it  seemed  almost  a  law  of  her  mind  that 
whatever  was  possessing  it  she  must  instinct- 
ively weave  into  a  romance.  Thus  in  writing 
her  history-epitome  she  must  improve  on  the 
original,  when  too  dry,  by  exercising  her  fancy 
in  the  description  of  places  and  personages. 
The  actual  political  events  of  that  period  were  of 
the  most  exciting  character  ;  Napoleon's  Russian 
campaign,  abdication,  retreat  to  Elba,  the  Hun- 
dred Days,  Waterloo,  the  Restoration,  following 
each  other  in  swift  succession.  Old  Madame 
Dupin  was  an  anti-Bonapartist,  but  Aurore  had 
caught  from  her  mother  something  of  the  popu- 
lar infatuation  for  the  emperor,  and  her  fancy 
would  create  him  over  again,  as  he  might  have 
been  had  his  energies  been  properly  directed. 
Her  day-dreams  were  often  so  vivid  as  to  effect 
her  senses  with  all  the  force  of  realities. 

Such  a  visionary  life  might  have  been  most 
dangerous  and  mentally  enervating  had  her  or- 
ganization been  less  robust,  and  the  tendency 
to  reverie  not  been  matched  by  lively  external 
perception  and  plentiful  physical  activity.  As 


EARLY    YEARS.  19 

it  was,  if  at  one  moment  she  was  in  a  cloud-land  of 
her  own,  or  poring  over  the  stories  of  the  Iliad, 
the  classic  mythologies,  or  Tasso's  Gerusalemme, 
the  next  would  see  her  scouring  the  fields  with 
Ursule  and  Hippolyte,  playing  practical  jokes 
on  the  tutor,  and  extemporizing  wild  out-of-door 
games  and  dances  with  her  village  companions. 
Of  serious  religious  education  she  received 
none  at  all.  Here,  again,  the  authorities  were 
divided.  Her  mother  was  pious  in  a  primitive 
way,  though  holding  aloof  from  priestly  influ- 
ences. The  grandmother,  a  disciple  of  Jean- 
Jacques  Rousseau  and  of  Voltaire,  had  re- 
nounced the  Catholic  creed,  and  was  what  was 
then  called  a  Deist.  But  beyond  discouraging 
a  belief  in  miraculous  agencies  she  preserved  a 
neutrality  with  her  ward  on  the  subject,  and 
Aurore  was  left  free  to  drift  as  her  nature  should 
decide.  Instinctively  she  felt  more  drawn 
toward  her  mother's  unreasoning,  emotional 
faith  than  toward  a  system  of  philosophic,  criti- 
cal inquiry.  But  on  both  sides  what  was  offered 
her  to  worship  was  too  indefinite  to  satisfy  her 
strong  religious  instincts.  Once  more  she  filled 
in  the  blank  with  her  imagination,  which  was 
forthwith  called  upon  to  picture  a  being  who 
should  represent  all  perfections,  human  and  di- 
vine ;  something  that  her  heart  could  love,  as 
well  as  her  intelligence  approve. 


20  GEORGE    SAND. 

This  ideal  figure,  for  whom  she  devised  the 
name  Coramb^  was  to  combine  all  the  spiritual 
qualities  of  the  Christian  ideal  with  the  earthly 
grace  and  beauty  of  the  mythological  deities  of 
Greece.  For  very  many  years  she  cherished 
this  fantasy,  finding  there  the  scope  she  sought 
for  her  aspirations  after  superhuman  excellence. 
It  is  hardly  too  much  to  say  that  the  Christian- 
ity which  had  been  expressly  left  out  in  her 
teaching  she  invented  for  herself.  She  erected 
a  woodland  altar  in  the  recesses  of  a  thicke.t  to 
this  imaginary  object  of  her  adoration,  and  it  is 
a  characteristic  trait  that  the  sacrifices  she 
chose  to  offer  there  were  the  release  of  birds 
and  butterflies  that  had  been  taken  prisoners  — 
as  a  symbolical  oblation  most  welcome  to  a  di- 
vinity whose  essential  attributes  were  infinite 
mercy  and  love.  It  will  be  remembered  that  a 
somewhat  similar  anecdote  is  related  of  the 
youthful  Goethe. 

Aurore,  as  the  years  went  on,  had  grown  sin- 
cerely fond  of  Madame  Dupin  ;  but  her  mother 
still  held  the  foremost  place  in  her  heart,  and 
she  had  never  ceased  to  cherish  the  belief  that 
if  they  two  could  live  together  she  would  be 
perfectly  happy.  The  discovery  of  this  deeply 
irritated  her  grandmother,  who  at  length  was 
provoked  to  intimate  to  the  girl  something  of 
the  real  motive  for  insisting  on  this  separation 


EARLY    YEARS.  21 

—  namely,  that  her  mother's  antecedents  were 
such  as,  in  the  eyes  of  Aurore's  well-wishers,  ren- 
dered it  desirable  to  establish  the  daughter's  ex- 
istence apart  from  that  of  her  parent.  Sooner 
or  later  such  a  revelation  must  have  been  made  ; 
but  made  as  it  was,  thus  precipitately,  in  a  mo- 
ment of  jealous  anger,  the  chief  result  was  of 
necessity  to  cause  a  painful  and  dangerous  shock 
to  the  sensitive  young  mind.  It  brought  about 
an  unnatural  discord  in  her  moral  nature,  forbid- 
den all  at  once  to  respect  what  she  had  loved  most, 
and  must  continue  to  love,  in  spite  of  all.  On 
the  injurious  effects  of  the  over-agitation  to 
which  she  was  subjected  in  her  childhood  she 
has  laid  much  stress  in  her  remarkable  work, 
"The  Story  of  My  Life."  Much  of  this  book, 
written  when  she  was  between  forty  and  fifty, 
reads  like  a  romance  ;  and  had  a  certain  amount 
of  retrospective  imagination  entered  into  the 
treatment  of  these  reminiscences  it  would  not 
be  surprising.  The  tendency  to  impart  poetical 
color  and  significance  to  whatever  was  capable 
of  taking  it  was  her  mastering  impulse,  and  may 
sometimes  have  led  her  to  lose  the  distinction 
between  fancy  and  reality,  especially  as  by  her 
own  confession  her  memory  was  never  her 
strong  point.  But  she  had  an  excellent  memory 
for  impressions,  and  no  reader  whose  own  recol- 
lections of  childhood  have  not  grown  faint,  but 


22  GEORGE    SAND. 

will  feel  the  profound  truth  of  the  spirit  of  the 
narrative,  which  is  of  a  kind  that  occasional  ex- 
aggerations in  the  letter  cannot  depreciate  in 
value  as  a  psychological  history.  For  an  account 
of  her  early  life  it  must  always  remain  the  most 
important  source. 

Aurore  was  now  thirteen,  and  though  she  had 
read  a  good  deal  of  miscellaneous  literature  her 
instruction  had  been  mostly  of  a  desultory  sort ; 
she  was  behindhand  in  the  accomplishments 
deemed  desirable  for  young  ladies ;  and  her 
country  manners,  on  the  score  of  etiquette,  left 
something  to  be  desired.  To  school,  therefore, 
it  was  decided  that  she  must  go  ;  and  her  grand- 
mother selected  that  held  by  the  nuns  of  the 
"  English  convent "  at  Paris,  as  the  most  fash- 
ionable institution  of  the  kind. 

This  Couverit  des  Anglaises  was  a  British 
community,  first  established  in  the  French  capi- 
tal in  Cromwell's  time.  It  has  now  been  re- 
moved, and  its  site,  the  Rue  St.  Victor,  has 
undergone  complete  transformation.  In  1817, 
however,  it  was  in  high  repute  among  conven- 
tual educational  establishments.  To  this  re- 
treat Aurore  was  consigned  and  there  spent 
more  than  two  years,  an  untroubled  time  she 
has  spoken  of  as  in  many  respects  the  happiest 
of  her  life.  There  is  certainly  nothing  more 
delightful  in  her  memoirs  than  the  vivid  picture 


EARLY    YEARS.  23 

there  drawn  of  the  convent-school  interior, 
drawn  without  flattery  or  malice,  and  with 
sympathy  and  animation. 

The  nunnery  was  an  extensive  building  of 
rambling  construction  —  with  parts  disused  and 
dilapidated  —  quite  a  little  settlement,  counting 
some  150  inmates,  nuns,  pupils  and  teachers; 
with  cells  and  dormitories,  long  corridors,  chap- 
els, kitchens,  distillery,  spiral  staircases  and 
mysterious  nooks  and  corners ;  a  large  garden 
planted  with  chestnut  trees,  a  kitchen  garden, 
and  a  little  cemetery  without  gravestones,  over- 
grown with  evergreens  and  flowers.  The  sisters 
were  all  English,  Irish,  or  Scotch,  but  the 
majority  of  the  pupils  and  the  secular  mis- 
tresses were  French.  Of  the  nuns  the  ex- 
scholar  speaks  with  respect  and  affection,  but 
their  religious  exercises  left  them  but  the 
smaller  share  of  their  time  and  attention  to 
devote  to  the  pupils.  The  girls  almost  without 
exception  were  of  high  social  rank,  the  bourgeois 
element  as  yet  having  scarcely  penetrated  this 
exclusive  seminary.  Aurore  formed  warm  friend- 
ships with  many  of  her  school-fellows,  and  seems 
to  have  been  decidedly  popular  with  the  author- 
ities as  well,  in  spite  of  the  high  spirits  which 
amid  congenial  company  found  vent  in  harmless 
mischief  and  a  sort  of  organized  playful  in- 
subordination. The  school  had  two  parties : 


24  GEORGE    SAND. 

the  sages  or  good  girls,  and  the  diables,  their 
opposites.  Among  the  latter  Aurore  conscien- 
tiously enrolled  herself  and  became  a  leader  in 
their  escapades,  acquiring  the  sobriquet  of 
"Madcap."  These  outbreaks  led  to  nothing 
more  heinous  than  playing  off  tricks  on  a 
tyrannical  mistress,  or  making  raids  on  the 
forbidden  ground  of  the  kitchen  garden.  But 
the  charm  that  held  together  the  confraternity 
of  diablcs  was  a  grand,  long-cherished  design, 
to  which  their  best  energy  and  ingenuity  were 
devoted  —  a  secret,  heroic-sounding  enterprise, 
set  forth  as  "the  deliverance  of  the  victim." 
A  tradition  existed  among  them  that  a  captive 
was  kept  languishing  miserably  in  some  remote 
cell,  and  they  had  set  themselves  the  task  of 
discovering  and  liberating  this  hapless  wretch. 
It  is  needless  to  say  that  prisoner  and  dun- 
geon existed  in  their  girlishly  romantic  brains 
alone,  but  easy  to  see  how  such  a  legend  might 
possess  itself  of  their  imaginations,  and  to  what 
bewitching  exploits  it  might  invite  firm  believers. 
The  supervision  was  not  so  very  strict  but  that 
a  diable  of  spirit  might  sometimes  play  truant 
from  the  class-room  unnoticed.  The  truants 
would  then  start  on  an  exciting  journey  of  dis- 
covery through  the  tortuous  passages,  exploring 
the  darkest  recesses  of  the  more  deserted  por- 
tions of  the  convent ;  now  penetrating  into  the 


EARLY    YEARS.  2$ 

vaults,  now  adventuring  on  the  roofs,  regard- 
less of  peril  to  life  or  limb.  This  sublimely 
ridiculous  undertaking,  half-sport,  half-earnest, 
so  fascinated  Aurore  as  to  become  the  most  im- 
portant occupation  of  her  mind  ! 

The  teaching  provided  for  the  young  ladies 
appears  to  have  been  of  the  customary  superfi- 
cial order — of  everything  a  little ;  a  little  music, 
a  little  drawing,  a  little  Italian.  With  English 
she  had  the  opportunity  of  becoming  really  con- 
versant, as  it  was  the  language  commonly 
spoken  in  the  convent,  where  also  she  could  not 
fail  to  acquire  some  insight  into  the  English 
character.  This  she  has  treated  more  fairly 
than  England  for  long  was  to  treat  her.  Few 
of  her  gifted  literary  countrymen  have  done 
such  justice  to  the  sterling  good  qualities  of 
our  nation.  Even  when,  in  delineating  the 
Briton,  she  caricatures  those  peculiarities  with 
which  he  is  accredited  abroad,  her  blunders 
seem  due  to  incomplete  knowledge  rather  than 
to  any  inability  to  comprehend  the  spirit  of  a 
people  with  whom,  indeed,  she  had  many  points 
of  sympathy.  She  could  penetrate  that  cold- 
ness and  constraint  of  manner  so  repelling  to 
French  natures,  and  has  said  of  us,  with  uncon- 
ventional truth,  that  our  character  is  in  reality 
more  vehement  than  theirs  ;  but  with  less 
mastery  over  our  emotions  themselves,  we  have 


26  GEORGE    SAND. 

more  mastery  over  the  expression  of  our  emo- 
tions. Among  her  chosen  school-comrades 
were  several  English  girls,  but  on  leaving  the 
convent  their  paths  separated,  and  in  her  after 
life  she  had  but  rare  opportunities  for  renewing 
these  early  friendships. 

Some  eighteen  months  had  elapsed  in  this 
fashion  when  Aurore  began  to  tire  of  diablerie. 
The  victim  remained  undiscoverable.  The 
store  of  practical  jokes  was  exhausted.  Her 
restless  spirit,  pent  up  within  those  convent 
walls,  was  thirsting  for  a  new  experience, — 
something  to  fill  her  heart  and  life. 

It  came  in  the  dawn  of  a  religious  enthusiasm 
— different  from  her  mystical  dream  of 
Corambe,  which  however  poetical  was  out  of 
harmony  with  the  spirit  and  ritual  of  a  Catholic 
convent.  But  monastic  life  had  its  poetical 
aspects  also  ;  and  through  these  it  was  that  its 
significance  first  successfully  appealed  to  her. 
An  evening  in  the  chapel,  a  Titian  picture 
representing  Christ  on  the  Mount  of  Olives,  a 
passage  chanced  upon  in  the  "  Lives  of  the 
Saints,"  brought  impressions  that  awoke  in  her 
a  new  fervor,  and  inaugurated  a  period  of 
ardent  Catholicism.  All  vagueness  was  gone 
from  her  devotional  aspirations,  which  now 
acquired  a  direct  personal  import.  The  change 
brought  a  revolution  in  her  general  behavior. 


EARLY     YEARS.  2/ 

She  was  understood  to  have  been  "converted." 
"  Madcap "  was  now  nicknamed  "  Sainte 
Aurore  "  by  her  profane  school-fellows,  and  she 
formed  the  serious  desire  and  intention  of  be- 
coming a  nun. 

The  sisters,  a  practical-minded  community, 
behaved  with  great  good  sense  and  discretion. 
Without  distressing  the  youthful  proselyte  by 
casting  doubts  on  her  "vocation,"  they  re- 
minded her  that  the  consideration  was  a  dis- 
tant one,  as  for  years  to  come  her  first  duty 
would  be  to  her  relatives,  who  would  never 
sanction  her  present  determination.  Her  con- 
fessor, the  Abbe  Premord,  a  Jesuit  and  man  of 
the  world,  was  likewise  kindly  discouraging  ;  and 
perceiving  that  her  zeal  was  leading  her  to 
morbid  self-accusation  and  asceticism  of  mood, 
he  shrewdly  enjoined  upon  her  as  a  penance  to 
take  part  in  the  sports  and  pastimes  with  the 
rest  as  heretofore,  much  to  her  dismay.  But 
she  soon  found  her  liking  for  these  return,  and 
with  it  her  health  of  mind.  Unshaken  still  in 
her  private  belief  that  she  would  take  the  veil 
in  due  time,  she  was  content  to  wait,  and  in  the 
interval  to  be  a  useful  and  agreeable  member  of 
society.  No  more  insubordination,  no  more 
mischievous  freaks,  yet  "  Sainte  Aurore  "  re- 
mained the  life  and  soul  of  all  recreations 
recognized  by  authority,  which  even  included 
little  theatrical  performances  now  and  then. 


28  GEORGE    SAND. 

She  had  become  more  regular  in  her  studies 
since  her  mind  had  taken  a  serious  turn,  but  her 
heart  was  less  in  them  than  ever.  Considering 
this,  and  the  deficiencies  in  the  system  of  in- 
struction itself,  it  is  hardly  surprising  that  when, 
in  the  spring  of  1820,  her  grandmother  fearing 
that  the  monastic  idea  was  taking  hold  of  Auro- 
re  in  good  earnest  decided  to  remove  her  from 
the  Convent  des  Anglaises,  she  knew  little  more 
than  when  first  she  had  entered  it. 


CHAPTER  II. 

GIRLHOOD    AND    MARRIED    LIFE. 

AURORE  DUPIN  was  now  fifteen,  and  so  far, 
though  somewhat  peculiarly  situated,  she  and 
her  life  had  presented  no  very  extraordinary 
features,  nor  promise  of  the  same.  Her  ener- 
gies had  flowed  into  a  variety  of  channels,  and 
manifestly  clever  and  accustomed  to  take  the 
lead  though  she  might  be,  no  one,  least  of  all 
herself,  seems  to  have  thought  of  regarding  her 
as  a  wonder.  The  Lady  Superior  of  the  Con- 
vent dcs  Anglaises,  who  called  her  "  Still 
Waters,"  had  perhaps  an  inkling  of  something 
more  than  met  the  eye,  existent  in  this  pupil. 
But  a  dozen  years  were  yet  to  elapse  before  the 
moment  came  when  she  was  to  start  life  afresh 
for  herself,  on  a  footing  of  independence  and 
literary  enterprise,  and  by  her  first  published 
attempts  raise  her  name  at  once  above  the 
names  of  the  mass  of  her  fellow-creatures. 

Old  Madame  Dupin,  warned  by  failing  health 
that  her  end  was  not  far  off,  would  gladly 
have  first  assured  a  husband's  protection  for  her 


30  GEORGE    SAND. 

ward,  whom  she  had  now  succeeded  in  really 
dissociating  from  her  natural  guardian.  The 
girl's  bringing-up,  and  an  almost  complete  sep- 
aration for  the  last  five  years,  had  made  a  gap 
—  in  habits  of  mind  and  feeling  —  such  as  could 
hardly  be  quite  bridged  over,  between  her 
mother  and  herself.  But  though  beginning  to 
be  sadly  aware  of  this  and  of  the  increasing 
violence  and  asperities  of  poor  Madame  Maurice 
Dupin's  temper,  which  made  peace  under  one 
roof  with  her  a  matter  of  difficulty,  Aurore 
hung  back  from  the  notion  of  marriage,  and 
clearly  was  much  too  young  to  be  urged 
into  taking  so  serious  a  step.  So  to  Nohant 
she  returned  from  the  convent  in  the  spring 
of  1820.  There  she  continued  to  strike 
that  judicious  compromise  between  temporal 
and  spiritual  duties  and  pleasures  enjoined 
on  her  by  her  clerical  adviser.  Still  bent  on 
choosing  a  monastic  life,  when  free  to  choose 
for  herself,  she  was  reconciled  in  the  meantime 
to  take  things  as  they  came,  and  to  make  her- 
self happy  and  add  to  the  happiness  of  her 
grandmother  in  the  ordinary  way.  So  we  find 
her  enjoying  the  visit  of  one  of  her  school 
friends,  getting  up  little  plays  to  amuse  the 
elders,  practicing  the  harp,  receiving  from  her 
brother  Hippolyte  —  now  a  noisy  hussar  — 
during  his  brief  visit  home,  her  first  initiation 


GIRLHOOD  AND  MARRIED  LIFE.        3 1 

into  the  arts  of  riding  —  for  the  future  her 
favorite  exercise  —  and  of  pistol  -  shooting  ; 
and  last,  but  not  least,  beginning  to  suspect  that 
she  had  learned  nothing  whatever  while  at 
school,  and  setting  to  work  to  educate  herself, 
as  best  she  could,  by  miscellaneous  reading. 

In  the  spring  of  the  following  year  Madame 
Dupin's  health  and  mental  faculties  utterly 
broke  down.  But  she  lived  on  for  another  ten 
months.  Aurore  for  the  time  was  placed  in  a 
most  exceptional  position  for  a  French  girl  of 
sixteen.  She  was  thrown  absolutely  on  herself 
and  her  own  resources,  uncontrolled  and  unpro- 
tected, between  a  helpless,  half  imbecile  invalid, 
and  the  eccentric,  dogmatic  pedagogue,  Deschar- 
tres.  Highly  susceptible  to  influences  from  with- 
out, her  mind,  during  their  sudden  and  complete 
suspension,  seemed  as  it  were  invited  to  dis- 
cover and  take  its  own  bent 

Piqued  by  the  charge  of  dense  ignorance 
flung  at  her  by  her  ex-tutor,  and  aware  that 
there  was  truth  in  it,  she  would  now  sit  up  all 
night  reading,  finding  her  appetite  for  the 
secular  knowledge  she  used  to  despise  grow  by 
what  it  fed  upon.  The  phase  of  religious  ex- 
altation she  had  recently  passed  through  still 
gave  the  tone  to  her  mind,  and  it  was  with  the 
works  of  famous  philosophers,  metaphysicians, 
and  Christian  mystics  that  she  began  her 


32  GEORGE    SAND. 

studies.  Comparing  the  "Imitation  of  Christ" 
with  Chateaubriand's  "  Spirit  of  Christianity," 
and  struck  here  and  elsewhere  with  the  wide 
discrepancies  and  contradictions  of  opinion 
manifest  between  great  minds  ranging  them- 
selves under  one  theological  banner,  she  was 
led  on  to  speculations  that  alarmed  her  con- 
science, and  she  appealed  to  her  spiritual 
director,  the  Abbe  Premord,  for  advice,  fear- 
ing lest  her  faith  might  be  endangered  if 
she  read  more.  He  encouraged  her  to  per- 
severe, telling  her  in  no  wise  to  deny  herself 
these  intellectual  enjoyments.  But  her  rigid 
Catholicism  was  doomed  from  that  hour.  Hers 
was  that  order  of  mind  which  can  never  give 
ostensible  adhesion  to  a  creed  whilst  morally 
unconvinced ;  never  accept  that  refuge  of  the 
weak  from  the  torment  of  doubt,  in  abdicating 
the  functions  of  reason  and  conscience,  shifting 
the  onus  of  responsibility  on  to  others,  and 
agreeing  to  believe,  as  it  were,  by  proxy.  She 
had  plunged  fearlessly  and  headlong  into  Aris- 
totle, Bacon,  Locke,  Condillac,  Mably,  Leibnitz, 
Bossuet,  Pascal,  Montaigne,  Montesquieu  ;  be- 
ginning to  call  many  things  in  question,  and, 
through  the  darkness  and  confusion  into  which 
she  was  sometimes  thrown,  trying  honestly  and 
sincerely  to  feel  her  way  to  some  more  glorious 
faith  and  light. 


GIRLHOOD  AND  MARRIED  LIFE.        33 

In  the  convent  she  had  been  familiarized 
with  Romanism  under  its  most  attractive  as- 
pects. The  moral  refinement,  the  mystery,  the 
seclusion,  and  picturesque  beauties  of  that 
abode  had  a  poetic  charm  that  had  carried  her 
irresistibly  away.  But,  confronted  with  the 
system  in  its  practical  working,  she  was  stag- 
gered by  many  of  .its  features.  In  the  country 
churches  around  her  she  saw  the  peasantry  en- 
couraged in  their  grossest  superstitions,  and  the 
ritual,  carelessly  hurried  through,  degenerate 
often  into  mere  mockery.  The  practice  of  con- 
fession, moreover — her  ultimate  condemnation 
of  which,  as  an  institution  whose  results  for 
good  are  scanty,  its  dangers  excessive,  will  be 
endorsed  by  most  persons  in  this  country — and 
the  Church's  denial  of  the  right  of  salvation 
to  all  outside  its  pale,  revolted  her ;  and  she 
caught  at  the  teaching  of  those  who  claimed 
liberty  of  conscience.  "  Reading  Leibnitz,"  she 
observes,  "  I  became  a  Protestant  without  know- 
ing it."  That  purer  and  more  liberal  Chris- 
tianity she  dreamed  of  had,  she  discovered,  been 
the  ideal  of  many  great  men.  The  step 
brought  her  face  to  face  with  fresh  and  grave 
problems  of  which,  she  truly  observes,  the  so- 
lutions were  beyond  her  years,  and  beyond  that 
era.  There  came  to  her  rare  moments  of  ce- 
lestial calm  and  concord,  but  she  owed  them  to 


34  GEORGE    SAND. 

other  and  indirect  sources  of  inspiration.  The 
study  of  philosophy,  indeed,  was  not  much  more 
congenial  to  her  at  sixteen  than  arithmetic  had 
been  at  six.  In  what  merely  exercised  memory 
and  attention  she  took  •  comparatively  but  lan- 
guid interest.  Instruction,  to  bring  her  its  full 
profit,  must  be  conveyed  through  the  medium 
of  moral  emotion,  but  the  mysterious  power  of 
feeling  to  stimulate  intellect  was  with  her  im- 
mense. She  turned  now  to  the  poets  —  Shake- 
speare, Byron,  Dante,  Milton,  Virgil,  Pope. 
A  poet  herself,  she  discovered  that  these  had 
more  power  than  controversialists  to  strengthen 
her  religious  convictions,  as  well  as  to  enlarge 
her  mind.  Above  all,  the  writings  of  the  poet- 
moralist,  Jean-Jacques  Rousseau,  helped  her 
towards  resolving  the  question  that  occupied 
her,  of  her  true  vocation  in  life,  now  that  her 
determination  to  take  the  veil  was  not  a  little 
shaken. 

The  midnight  student  was  by  turns  Amazon 
and  sick-nurse  as  well.  From  the  fatigue  of 
long  watches  over  her  books  or  by  the  invalid's 
bedside,  she  found  a  better  and  more  invigor- 
ating refreshment  than  sleep  in  solitary  morn- 
ing rides  across  country.  Her  fearlessness  on 
horseback  was  madness  in  the  eyes  of  the 
neighbors.  Riding,  then  and  there,  was  al- 
most unheard  of  for  ladies,  a  girl  in  a  riding- 


GIRLHOOD  AND  MARRIED  LIFE.        35 

habit  regarded  as  simply  a  Cossack  in  petti- 
coats, and  Mademoiselle  Dupin's  delight  in 
horsc-cxcrcisc  sufficed  to  stamp  her  as  eccentric 
and  strong-minded  in  the  opinion  of  the  country 
gentry  and  the  towns-folk  of  La  Chatre.  They 
had  heard  of  her  studies,  too,  and  disapproved 
of  them  as  unlady-like  in  character.  Philoso- 
phy was  bad  enough,  but  anatomy,  which  she 
had  been  encouraged  to  take  up  by  Deschar- 
tres,  himself  a  proficient  in  medical  science, 
was  worse  —  sacrilegious,  for  a  person  under- 
stood to  be  professedly  of  a  devotional  turn  of 
mind.  She  went  game-shooting  with  the  old 
tutor ;  he  had  a  mania  for  the  sport,  which  she 
humored  though  she  did  not  share.  But  when 
quails  were  the  object,'  she  owns  to  have  en- 
joyed her  part  in  the  chase,  which  was  to  crouch 
in  the  furrows  among  the  green  corn,  imitating 
the  cry  of  the  birds  to  entice  them  within  gun- 
shot of  the  sportsman.  Lastly,  finding  in  the 
feminine  costume-fashions  of  that  period  a  dire 
impediment  to  out-door  enterprise  of  the  sort, 
in  a  region  of  no  roads,  or  bad  roads,  of  rivers 
perpetually  in  flood,  turning  the  lanes  into 
water-courses  for  three-fourths  of  the  year,  of 
miry  fields  and  marshy  heaths,  she  procured 
for  herself  a  suit  of  boy's  clothes,  donning 
blouse  and  gaiters  now  and  then  without  com- 
punction for  these  rough  country  walks  and 
rambles. 


36  GEORGE    SAXD. 

Here,  indeed,  was  more  than  enough  to  raise 
a  hue-and-cry  at  La  Chatre,  a  small  provincial 
town,  probably  neither  better  nor  worse  than 
the  rest  of  its  class,  a  class  never  yet  noted  for 
charity  or  liberality  of  judgment.  The  strangest 
stories  began  to  be  circulated  concerning  her, 
stories  for  the  most  part  so  false  and  absurd  as 
to  inspire  her  with  a  sweeping  contempt  for 
public  opinion.  By  a  very  common  phenome- 
non, she  was  to  incur  throughout  her  life  far 
more  censure  through  freaks,  audacious  as 
breaches  of  custom,  but  intrinsically  harmless, 
nor  likely  to  set  the  fashion  to  others,  than  is 
often  reserved  for  errors  of  a  graver  nature. 
The  conditions  of  ordinary  middle-class  society 
are  designed,  like  ready-made  clothes,  to  fit  the 
vast  majority  of  human  beings,  who  live  under 
them  without  serious  inconvenience.  For  the 
future  George  Sand  to  confine  her  activities 
within  the  very  narrow  restrictions  laid  down 
by  the  social  code  of  La  Chatre  was,  it  must  be 
owned,  hardly  to  be  expected.  It  was  perhaps 
premature  to  throw  clown  the  gauntlet  at  six- 
teen, but  her  inexperience  and  isolation  were 
complete.  The  grandmother  in  her  dotage  was 
no  counsellor  at  all.  Deschartres,  an  oddity  him- 
self, cared  for  none  of  these  things.  Those  best 
acquainted  with  her  at  La  Chatre,  families  the 
heads  of  which  had  known  her  father  well  and 


GIRLHOOD  AND  MARRIED  LIFE.        37 

whose  younger  members  had  fraternized  with 
her  from  childhood  upwards,  liked  her  none  the 
less  for  her  unusual  proceedings,  and  defended 
her  stoutly  against  her  detractors. 

"You  are  losing  your  best  friend,"  said  her 
dying  grandmother  to  her  when  the  end  came, 
in  December,  1821.  Aurore  was,  indeed,  placed 
in  a  difficult  and  painful  situation.  S^he  had  in- 
herited all  the  property  of  the  deceased,  who,  in 
her  will,  expressed  her  desire  that  her  own  near- 
est relations  by  her  marriage  with  M.  Dupin,  a 
family  of  the  name  of  de  Villeneuve,  well-off 
and  highly  connected,  should  succeed  her  as 
guardians  to  her  ward.  But  it  was  impossible  to 
dispute  the  claims  of  Madame  Maurice  Dupin  to 
the  care  of  her  own  daughter  if  she  chose  to 
assert  them,  which  she  quickly  did,  bearing  off 
the  girl  with  her  to  Paris  —  Nohant  being  left 
under  the  stewardship  of  Deschatres  —  and  by 
her  unconciliatory  behavior  further  alienating 
the  other  side  of  the  family  from  whom  Aurore, 
through  no  fault  of  her  own,  was  virtually  es- 
tranged at  the  moment  when  she  stood  most  in 
need  of  a  friend.  Twenty  years  later  they  came 
forward  to  claim  kinship  and  friendship  again : 
it  was  then  with  George  Sand,  the  illustrious 
writer,  become  one  of  the  immortals. 

Thus  her  lot  was  cast  for  her  in  her  mother's 
home  and  plebeian  circle  of  acquaintance.  So 


38  GEORGE  SAND. 

much  the  worse,  it  was  supposed,  for  her  pros- 
pects, social  and  matrimonial.  This  did  not  dis- 
tress her,  but  none  the  less  was  the  time  that 
followed  an  unhappy  one.  The  mother  whom 
she  had  idolized,  and  of  whom  she  always  re- 
mained excessively  fond,  appears  to  have  been 
something  of  a  termagant  in  her  later  years. 
The  heavy  troubles  of  her  life  had  aggravated 
one  of  those  irascible  and  uncontrollable  tem- 
pers that  can  only  be  soothed  by  superior  vio- 
lence. Aurore,  saddened,  gentle,  and  submis- 
sive, only  exasperated  her.  Her  fitful  affection 
and  fitful  rages  combined  to  make  her  daugh- 
ter's life  miserable,  and  to  incline  the  girl  un- 
consciously to  look  over-favorably  on  any  recog- 
nized mode  of  escape  that  should  present  itself. 

A  long  visit  to  the  country-house  of  some 
friends  near  Melun,  was  hailed  as  a  real  relief  by 
both.  Here  there  were  young  people,  and 
plenty  of  cheerful  society.  Aurore  became  like 
one  of  the  family,  and  her  mother  was  per- 
suaded to  allow  her  to  prolong  her  stay  indefi- 
nitely. Among  the  new  acquaintance  she 
formed  whilst  on  this  visit  was  one  that  de- 
cided her  future. 

M.  Casimir  Dudevant  was  a  young  man  on 
terms  of  intimacy  with  her  hosts,  the  Duplessis 
family.  From  the  first  he  was  struck  by  Mile. 
Dupin,  who  on  his  further  acquaintance  was 


GIRLHOOD  AND  MARRIED  LIFE.         39 
• 

not  otherwise  than  pleased  with  him.  The 
sequel,  before  long,  came  in  an  offer  of  marriage 
on  his  part,  which  she  accepted  with  the  ap- 
proval of  her  friends. 

He  was  seven-and-twenty,  had  served  in  the  • 
army,  and  studied  for  the  law  ;  but  had  expecta- 
tions which  promised  an  independence.  His 
father,  Colonel  Dudevant,  a  landed  proprietor 
in  Gascony,  whose  marriage  had  proved  child- 
less, had  acknowledged  Casimir,  though  illegiti- 
mate, and  made  him  his  heir.  It  was  reckoned 
not  a  brilliant  parti  for  the  cJidtelaine  of  Nohant, 
but  a  perfectly  eligible  one.  It  was  not  a  mar- 
iage  de  convenance  ;  the  young  people  had 
chosen  freely.  Still  less  was  it  a  love  match. 
Romantic  sentiment  —  counted  out  of  place  in 
such  arrangements  by  the  society  they  belonged 
to  —  seems  not  to  have  been  dreamed  of  on 
either  side.  But  they  had  arranged  it  for  them- 
selves, which  to  Aurore  would  naturally  seem, 
as  indeed  it  was,  an  improvement  on  the  usual 
mode  of  procedure,  according  to  which  the 
burden  of  choice  would  have  rested  with  her 
guardians.  It  was  a  manage  de  raison  founded, 
as  she  and  he  believed,  on  mutual  friendliness  ; 
in  reality  on  a  total  and  fatal  ignorance  of  each 
other's  characters,  and  probably,  on  Aurore's 
side,  of  her  own  as  well.  She  was  only  just 
eighteen,  and  had  a  wretched  home. 


40  GEORGE  SAND. 

* 

The  match  was  sanctioned  by  their  parents, 
respectively.  In  September,  1822,  Aurore 
Dupin  -became  Madame  Dudevant,  and  shortly 
afterwards  she  and  her  husband  established 
themselves  at  Nohant,  there  to  settle  down  to 
quiet  country  life. 

If  tranquillity  did  not  bring  all  the  happiness 
that  was  expected,  it  was  at  least  unbroken  by 
such  positive  trials  as  those  to  come,  and  what- 
ever was  lacking  to  Madame  Dudevant's  felicity 
she  forgot  for  a  while  in  her  joy  over  the  birth 
of  her  son  Maurice,  in  the  summer  of  1823  —  a 
son  for  whom  more  than  ordinary  treasures  of 
maternal  affection  were  in  store,  and  who,  when 
his  childhood  was  past,  was  to  become  and  re- 
main until  the  time  of  her  death  a  sure  consola- 
tion and  compensation  to  her  for  the  troubles  of 
her  life. 

The  first  two  years  after  her  marriage  were 
spent  almost  without  interruption  in  the  still 
monotony  of  Nohant.  "  We  live  here  as  quietly 
as  possible,"  she  writes  to  her  mother  in  June, 
1825,  "seeing  very  few  people,  and  occupying 
ourselves  with  rural  cares."  That  absolute 
dependence  on  each  other's  society  that  might 
have  had  its  charm  for  a  really  well-assorted 
couple  was,  however,  not  calculated  to  prolong 
any  illusions  that  might  exist  as  to  the  perfect 
harmony  of  their  dispositions.  Already  in  the 


GIRLHOOD  AND  MARRIED   LIFE.        41 

summer  of  1824  the  Dudevants  had  sought  a 
change  from  seclusion  in  a  long  visit  to  their 
friends  the  Duplessis,  after  which  they  rented  a 
villa  in  the  environs  of  Paris  for  a  short  while. 
The  spring  found  them  back  at  Nohant,  and 
the  summer  of  1825  was  marked  by  a  tour  to 
the  Pyrenees,  undertaken  in  concert  with  some 
old  school-fellows  of  Aurore's,  two  sisters,  who 
with  their  father  were  starting  for  Cauterets. 
The  pleasure  of  girlish  friendships  renewed 
gave  double  charm  to  the  trip,  and  her  delight 
in  the  mountain  scenery  knew  no  bounds. 

"  I  am  in  such  a  state  of  enthusiasm  about  the 
Pyrenees,"  she  writes  to  her  mother,  "that  I 
shall  dream  and  talk  of  nothing  but  mountains 
and  torrents,  caves  and  precipices,  all  the  rest  of 
my  life."  She  joined  eagerly  in  every  excursion 
on  foot  and  horseback,  but  even  moderate  feats 
of  mountaineering,  such  as  are  now  expected  of 
the  quietest  English  lady-tourists  by  their  hus- 
bands and  brothers,  were  then  deemed  startling- 
ly  eccentric,  and  got  her  into  fresh  trouble  on 
this  head. 

Her  letters  and  the  fragments  of  her  journal 
kept  during  this  time,  and  in  which  she  tried  to 
commit  to  paper  her  impressions,  whilst  fresh 
and  vivid,  of  the  Pyrenees,  show  the  same  pecu- 
liar descriptive  power  that  distinguished  her 
novels  —  that  art  of  seizing  grand  general  effects 


42  GEORGE  SAND. 

together  with  picturesque  detail,  and  depicting 
them  in  a  simple  and  straightforward  manner,  in 
which  she  was  an  adept.  It  must  be  added  that 
the  diffuseness  which  characterizes  her  fiction, 
also  pervades  her  correspondence.  Neither  can 
be  adequately  represented  by  extracts.  Her 
composition  is  like  a  gossamer  web,  that  must 
be  shown  in  its  entirety,  as  to  split  it  up  is  to 
destroy  it. 

The  ensuing  winter  and  spring  were  passed 
agreeably  in  visits  with  her  husband  to  his  fam- 
ily at  N£rac,  Gascony,  and  to  friends  in  the 
neighborhood.  In  the  summer  of  1826  their 
wanderings  ended.  Once  more  they  settled 
down  at  Nohant,  where  Madame  Dudevant,  ex- 
cept for  a  few  brief  absences  on  visits  to  friends, 
or  to  health  resorts  in  the  vicinity,  remained 
stationary  for  the  next  four  years,  during  which 
her  after-destiny  was  unalterably  shaping  itself. 

It  is  perfectly  idle  to  speculate  on  what  might 
have  happened  had  her  lot  in  marriage  turned 
out  a  fortunate  one,  or  had  she  married  for  love, 
or  had  the  moral  character  of  the  partner  of  her 
life  preserved  any  solid  claim  on  her  respect, 
since  the  contrary  was  unhappily  the  case. 
Their  situation,  no  doubt,  was  anomalous.  In 
the  young  girl  of  barely  eighteen,  country-bred 
and  intellectually  immature,  whom  M.  Dude- 
vant had  chosen  to  marry,  who  could  have  dis- 


GIRLHOOD  AND  MARRIED  LIFE.       43 

cerned  one  of  the  greatest  poetical  geniuses 
and  most  powerful  minds  of  the  century  ?  Some 
commiseration  might  a  priori  be  felt  for  the 
petty  squire's  son  who  had  taken  the  hand  of 
the  pretty  country-heiress,  promising  himself, 
no  doubt,  a  comfortable  jog-trot  existence  in  the 
ordinary  groove,  to  discover  in  after  years  that 
he  was  mated  with  the  most  remarkable  woman 
that  had  made  herself  heard  of  in  the  literary 
world  since  Sappho !  But  he  remained  fatally 
blind  to  the  nature  of  the  development  that  was 
taking  place  under  his  eyes,  preserving  to  the 
last  the  serenest  contempt  for  his  wife's  intelli- 
gence. Her  large  mind  and  enthusiastic  tem- 
perament sought  in  vain  for  moral  sympathy 
from  a  narrow  common  spirit,  and  in  proportion 
as  her  faculties  unfolded,  increasing  disparity 
between  them  brought  increasing  estrangement. 
Such  a  strong  artist-nature  may  require  for  its 
expansion  an  amount  of  freedom  not  easily  com- 
patible with  domestic  happiness.  But  of  real 
domestic  happiness  she  never  had  a  fair  chance, 
and  for  a  time  the  will  to  make  the  best  of  her 
lot  as  it  was  cast  appears  not  to  have  been 
wanting. 

The  Dudevants,  after  their  return,  home  in 
1826,  began  to  mix  more  freely  in  such  society 
as  La  Chatre  and  the  environs  afforded,  and  at 
certain  seasons  there  was  no  lack  of  provincial 


44  GEORGE    SAND. 

gayeties.  Aurora  Dudevant  all  her  life  long  was 
quite  indifferent  to  what  she  has  summarily  dis- 
missed as  "  the  silly  vanities  of  finery " 
"  Sonffrir  pour  etre  belle  "  was  what  from  her 
girlhood  she  declined  to  do.  Regard  for  the 
brightness  of  her  eyes,  her  complexion,  the 
whiteness  of  her  hands,  the  shape  of  her  foot, 
never  made  her  sacrifice  her  midnight  study, 
her  walks  in  the  sunshine,  or  her  good  country 
sabots  for  the  rough  lanes  of  Berry.  "  To  live 
under  glass,  in  order  not  to  get  tanned,  or  chap- 
ped, or  faded  before  the  time,  is  what  I  have 
always  found  impossible,"  she  for  her  part 
has  acknowledged.  And  she  cared  very  moder- 
ately for  general  society.  She  writes  to  her 
mother  in  spring,  1826 :  "It  is  not  the  thing  of 
all  others  that  reposes,  or  even  that  amuses  me 
best  ;  still  there  are  obligations  in  this  life, 
which  one  must  take  as  they  come."  She  was 
not  yet  two-and-twenty,  and  carnival-tide  with 
its  social  "obligations  "  in  the  form  of  balls  and 
receptions  was  not  unwelcome.  They  snatched 
her  away  from  her  increasing  depression.  She 
writes  of  these  diversions  to  her  mother  in  a 
lively  strain,  describing  how  one  ball  was  kept 
up  till  nine  o'clock  the  next  day,  how  every  Sun- 
day morning  the  fur/  preaches  against  dancing, 
but  in  the  evening  the  dance  goes  on  in  de- 
spite of  him  —  how  this  cross  cur/  is  not  their 


GIRLHOOD  AXD  MARRIED  LIFE.        45 

own  parish  curt  of  St.  Chartier,  —  a  very  old 
friend  and  a  "  character  "  who,  when  Madame 
Dudevant  was  five-and-thirty,  used  to  say  of  her, 
"  Aurore  is  a  child  I  have  always  been  fond  of." 
"  As  for  him,  if  only  he  were  sixty  years 
younger,"  she  adds,  "  I  would  undertake  to 
make  him  dance  himself  if  I  set  about  it." 
Then  follows  an  amusing  sketch  of  a  rustic 
bridal,  the  double  marriage  of  two  members  of 
the  Nohant  establishment : 

The  wedding-feast  came  off  in  our  coach-houses  — 
there  was  dinner  in  one,  dancing  in  the  other.  The 
splendor  was  such  as  you  may  imagine  ;  three  tallow 
candle-ends  by  way  of  illumination,  lots  of  home-made 
wine  for  refreshment;  the  orchestra  consisting  of  a  bag- 
pipe and  a  hurdy-gurdy,  the  noisiest  and,  therefore,  the 
best  appreciated  in  the  country  side.  We  invited  some 
friends  over  from  La  Chatre,  and  made  fools  of  ourselves 
in  a  hundred  thousand  ways ;  as,  for  instance,  dressing 
up  as  peasants  in  the  evening  and  disguising  ourselves  so 
well  as  not  to  recognize  each  other.  Madame  Duplessis 
was  charming  in  a  red  petticoat ;  Ursule,  in  a  blue  blouse 
and  a  big  hat  was  a  most  comical  fellow  ;  Casimir,  got 
up  as  a  beggar,  had  some  halfpence  given  him  in  all  good 
faith ;  Stephane,  whom  I  think  you  know,  as  a  spruce 
peasant,  made  believe  to  have  been  drinking,  stumbled 
against  our  sous-prefet  and  accosted  him  —  he  is  a  nice 
fellow,  and  was  just  going  to  depart  when  all  of  a  sudden 
he  recognized  us.  Well,  it  was  a  most  farcical  evening, 
and  would  have  amused  you  I  will  engage.  Perhaps 
you,  too,  would  have  been  tempted  to  put  on  the  country- 
cap,  and  I  will  answer  for  it  that  there  would  not  have 
been  a  pair  of  black  eyes  to  compete  with  yours. 


46  GEORGE    SAA'D. 

In  other  letters  written  in  a  vein  of  charming 
good  humor,  her  facility  and  spirit  are  shown  in 
her  treatment  of  trivial  incidents,  or  sketches  of 
local  characters,  as  this,  for  example,  of  an 
ancient  female  servant  in  her  employ  : 

The  strangest  old  woman  in  the  world —  active,  indus- 
trious, clean  and  faithful,  but  an  unimaginable  grumbler. 
She  grumbles  by  day,  and  I  think  by  night,  when  asleep. 
She  grumbles  whilst  making  the  butter,  she  grumbles 
when  feeding  the  poultry,  she  grumbles  even  at  her  meals. 
She  grumbles  at  other  people,  and  when  she  is  alone  she 
grumbles  at  herself.  I  never  meet  her  without  asking  her 
how  her  grumbling  is  getting  on,  and  she  grumbles 
away  more  than  ever. 

And  elsewhere  she  has  her  fling  at  the  little 
squabbles  and  absurdities  of  provincial  society, 
the  "sets"  and  petty  distinctions,  giving  a  hu- 
morous relation  of  the  collapse  of  her  well- 
meaning  efforts,  in  conjunction  with  friends  at 
the  sous-prefecture,  to  do  away  with  some  of 
these  caste  prejudices,  of  the  horror  and  indig- 
nation created  in  the  oligarchy  of  La  Chatre  by 
the  apparition  of  an  inoffensive  music-master 
and  his  wife  at  the  sous-prefc? s  reception,  horror 
so  great  that  on  the  next  occasion,  the  salon  of 
the  official  was  unfurnished  with  guests,  except 
for  the  said  music-master  and  the  Dudevants 
themselves.  She  wrote  a  poetical  skit  to  com- 
memorate the  incident,  which  created  great 
amusement  among  her  friends. 


GIRLHOOD  AND  MARRIED  LIFE.       47 

In  the  autumn,  1828,  her  daughter  Solange 
was  born.  The  care  of  her  two  children,  to 
whom  she  was  devoted,  occupied  her  seriously. 
Maurice's  education  was  beginning,  a  fresh  in- 
ducement to  her  to  study  that  she  might  be  bet- 
ter able  to  superintend  his  instruction.  His 
least  indisposition  put  her  into  a  fever  of  anx- 
iety. Her  own  health  during  all  these  years 
had  repeatedly  given  cause  for  alarm.  Symp- 
toms of  chest-disease  showed  themselves,  but 
afterwards  disappeared,  her  constitutional  vigor 
triumphing  in  the  end  over  complaints  which 
seem  to  a  great  extent  to  have  been  of  a  ner- 
vous order.  Meantime  her  domestic  horizon 
was  becoming  overcast  at  many  points. 

Her  brother,  Hippolyte  Chatiron,  now  mar- 
ried, came  with  his  family  to  settle  in  the  neigh- 
borhood, and  spent  some  time  at  Nohant.  He 
had  fallen  into  the  fatal  habit  of  drinking,  in 
which  he  was  joined  by  M.  Dudevant  to  the 
degradation  of  his  habits  and,  it  would  be  char- 
itable to  suppose,  to  the  confusion  of  his  intel- 
ligence. This  grave  ill  came  to  make  an  open 
break  in  the  household  calm,  hitherto  undis- 
turbed on  the  surface.  Low  company  and  its 
brutalizing  influences  were  tending  to  bring 
about  a  state  of  things  to  which  the  most  pa- 
tient of  wives  might  find  it  hard  to  submit.  A 
role  of  complete  self-effacement  was  not  one  it 


48  GEORGE    SAND. 

was  in  her  power  long  to  sustain,  and  the  utter 
moral  solitude  into  which  she  was  thrown  con- 
solidated those  forces  inclining  her  to  the  ex- 
treme of  self-assertion.  For  together  with 
trials  without  came  the  growing  sense  of  supe- 
riority, the  ennui  and  unrest  springing  from 
mental  faculties  with  insufficient  outlet,  and 
moreover,  denied  the  very  shadow  of  apprecia- 
tion at  home,  where  she  saw  the  claim  to  her 
deference  and  allegiance  co-exist  with  a  repu- 
diation she  resented  of  all  idea  of  the  recipro- 
city of  such  engageme'nts. 

She  had  voluntarily  handed  over  the  man- 
agement of  her  property  —  the  revenue  of 
which  was  hardly  proportionate  to  the  neces- 
sary expenses  and  required  careful  economy  — 
to  her  husband,  an  arrangement  which  left  her, 
even  for  pocket  money,  dependent  on  him. 
She  now  set  herself  to  devise  some  means  of 
adding  to  her  resources  by  private  industry. 
The  more  ambitious  project  of  securing  by  her 
own  exertions  a  separate  maintenance  for  her- 
self and  her  children  would  at  this  time  have 
seemed  chimerical,  but  it  haunted  her  as  a 
dream  long  before  it  took  definite  shape. 

It  was  not  in  literature  that  she  first  fancied 
she  saw  her  way  to  earning  an  independent 
income.  She  had  begun  to  make  amateur 
essays  in  novel-writing,  but  was  as  dissatisfied 


GIRLHOOD  AND  MARRIED  LIFE.       49 

with  them  as  with  the  compositions  of  her 
childhood,  and  with  a  religious  novelette  she 
had  produced  whilst  in  the  convent,  and  speed- 
ily committed  to  the  flames.  Again,  alluding 
to  her  attempts,  in  1825,  at  descriptions  of  the 
Pyrenees,  she  says  :  "  I  was  not  capable  then  of 
satisfying  myself  by  what  I  wrote,  for  I  finished 
nothing,  and  did  not  even  acquire  a  taste  for 
writing." 

But  she  had  dabbled  in  painting,  and  re- 
mained fond  of  it.  "  The  finest  of  the  arts," 
she  calls  it,  writing  to  her  mother  in  1830,  "and 
the  most  pleasant,  as  a  life-occupation,  whether 
taken  up  for  a  profession,  or  for  amusement 
merely.  If  I  had  real  talent,  I  should  consider 
such  a  lot  the  finest  in  the  world."  But  neither 
did  the  decoration  of  fans  and  snuff-boxes  nor 
the  production  of  little  water-color  likenesses 
of  her  children  and  friends,  beyond  which  her 
art  did  not  go,  promise  anything  brilliant  in  the 
way  of  remuneration. 

In  her  circle  of  friends  at  La  Chatre  —  old 
family  friends  who  had  known  her  all  her  life 
—  were  those  who  had  recognized  and  admired 
her  superior  ability.  Here,  too,  she  met  more 
than  one  young  spirit  with  literary  aspirations, 
and  one,  at  least,  M.  Jules  Sandeau,  who  was 
afterwards  to  achieve  distinguished  literary 
success.  The  desire  to  go  and  do  likewise 


50  GEORGE    SAND. 

came  and  took  hold  of  her,  together  with  the 
conviction  of  her  capability  to  make  her  mark. 
However  discontented  with  her  essays  in  novel- 
writing  hitherto,  she  began  to  be  conscious  she 
was  on  the  right  track.  The  Revolution  of  July, 
1830,  had  just  been  successfully  accomplished, 
and  new  hopes  and  ambitions  for  the  world  in 
general,  and  their  own  country  in  particular, 
lent  a  stimulus  to  the  intellectual  activity  of 
the  youth  of  France  —  a  movement  too  strong 
not  to  make  itself  felt,  even  in  Berry. 

The  state  of  things  at  Nohant  for  the  last 
two  years  had,  as  we  have  seen,  been  tending 
rather  to  stifle  than  to  keep  alive  any  hesitation 
or  compunction  Madame  Dudevant  might  have 
felt  at  breaking  openly  from  her  present  condi- 
tion. In  a  letter,  dated  October,  1830,  to  her 
son's  private  tutor,  M.  Boucoiran,  who  had  then 
been  a  year  under  their  roof  in  that  capacity, 
she  remarks,  significantly  : 

You  often  wonder  at  my  mobility  of  temper,  my  flex- 
ible character.  What  would  become  of  me  without  this 
power  of  self-distraction  ?  You  know  all  in  my  life,  and 
you  ought  to  understand  that  but  for  that  happy  turn  of 
mind  which  makes  me  quickly  forget  a  sorrow,  I  should 
be  disagreeable  and  perpetually  withdrawn  into  myself, 
useless  to  others,  insensible  to  their  affection. 

The  distance  between  herself  and  her  hus- 
band had,  indeed,  been  widening  until  now  the 


GIRLHOOD  AND  MARRIED  LIFE.        51 

sole  real  link  between  them  was  their  joint  love 
for  the  children.  No  pretence  of  mutual  affec- 
tion existed  any  longer.  Madame  Dudevant's 
feeling  seems  to  have  been  of  indifference 
merely ;  M.  Dudevant's  of  dislike,  mingled, 
probably,  with  a  little  fear.  It  appears  that  he 
committed  to  paper  his  sentiments  on  the  sub- 
ject, and  that  this  document,  ostensibly  in- 
tended by  him  not  to  be  opened  till  after  his 
death,  was  found  and  perused  by  his  wife.  It 
was  the  provocation  thus  occasioned  her,  and 
the  certainty  thus  acquired  of  her  husband's 
aversion  to  her  society,  that  brought  matters  to 
a  climax ;  so,  at  least,  she  asserted  in  the  heat 
of  the  moment.  But  nothing,  we  imagine, 
could  long  have  deferred  her  next  step,  strange 
and  venturesome  though  it  was.  Violent  in 
acting  on  a  determination  when  taken,  after  the 
manner,  as  she  observes,  of  those  whose  deter- 
minations are  slow  in  forming,  she  declared  her 
intentions  to  her  husband,  and  obtained  his 
consent  to  her  plan. 

According  to  this  singular  arrangement  she 
was  to  be  permitted  to  spend  every  alternate 
three  months  in  Paris,  where  she  proposed  to 
try  her  fortune  with  her  pen.  She  looked  for- 
ward to  having  her  little  girl  to  be  there  with 
her  as  soon  as  she  was  comfortably  settled,  sup- 
posing the  experiment  to  succeed.  For  half 


52  GEORGE    SAND. 

the  year  she  would  continue  to  reside,  as  hith- 
erto, at  Nohant,  so  as  not  to  be  long  separated 
from  her  sen,  who  was  old  enough  to  miss  her, 
and  to  part  from  whom,  on  any  terms,  cost  her 
dear.  But  he  was  to  be  sent  to  school  in  two 
years,  and  for  the  meantime  she  had  secured  for 
him  the  care  and  services  of  M.  Boucoiran, 
whom  she  thoroughly  trusted. 

Her  husband  was  to  allow  her  ^120  a  year 
out  of  her  fortune,  and  on  condition  that  the 
allowance  should  not  be  exceeded,  he  left  her 
at  liberty  to  get  on  as  she  chose,  abstaining 
from  further  interference. 

It  seems  obvious  that  this  compromise,  whilst 
postponing,  could  only  render  more  inevitable  a 
future  separation  on  less  amicable  terms,  though 
neither  appear  to  have  realized  it  at  the  time. 
Madame  Dudevant  can  have  had  no  motive  to 
blind  her  in  the  matter  beyond  her  desire,  in 
detaching  herself  from  her  present  position,  not 
to  disconnect  her  life  from  that  of  her  children. 
The  freedom  she  demanded  it  was  probably  too 
late  to  deny.  Those  about  her,  her  husband 
and  M.  Chatiron,  who,  with  his  family,  was  tem- 
porarily domesticated  at  Nohant,  and  who  so 
far  supported  her  as  to  offer  her  the  loan  of 
rooms  held  by  him  in  Paris,  for  the  first  part  of 
her  stay,  thought  her  resolution  but  a  caprice. 
And  viewed  by  the  light  of  her  subsequent 


GIRLHOOD  AND   MARRIED  LIFE.        53 

success  it  is  hard  now  to  realize  the  boldness  of 
an  undertaking  whose  consequences,  had  it 
failed,  must  have  been  humiliating  and  dis- 
astrous. She  had  no  practical  knowledge  of  the 
world,  had  received  no  artistic  training,  and 
enjoyed  none  of  the  advantages  of  intellectual 
society.  But  she  had  extraordinary  courage, 
spirit,  and  energy,  springing  no  doubt  from  a 
latent  sense  of  extraordinary  powers,  almost 
matured,  though  as  yet  but  half-manifest.  So 
much  she  knew  of  herself,  and  states  modestly : 
"I  had  discovered  that  I  could  write  quickly, 
easily,  and  for  long  at  a  time  without  fatigue ; 
that  my  ideas,  torpid  in  my  brain,  woke  up  and 
linked  themselves  together  deductively  in  the 
flow  of  the  pen  ;  that  in  my  life  of  seclusion,  I 
had  observed  a  good  deal,  and  understood  pretty 
well  the  characters  I  had  chanced  to  come 
across,  and  that,  consequently,  I  knew  human 
nature  well  enough  to  describe  it."  A  most 
moderate  estimate,  in  which,  however,  she  had 
yet  to  convince  people  that  she  was  not  self- 
deceived. 


CHAPTER     III. 

DEBUT    IN    LITERATURE. 

In  the  first  days  of  January  1831,  the  Rubicon 
was  passed.  The  step,  though  momentous  in 
any  case  to  Madame  Dudevant,  was  one  whose 
ultimate  consequences  were  by  none  less  antici- 
pated than  by  herself,  when  to  town  she  came, 
still  undecided  whether  her  future  destiny  were 
to  decorate  screens  and  tea-caddies,  or  to  write 
books,  but  resolved  to  give  the  literary  career  a 
trial. 

For  actual  subsistence  she  had  her  small  fixed 
allowance  from  home ;  for  credentials  she  was 
furnished  with  an  introduction  or  two  to  literary 
men  from  her  friends  in  the  country  who  had 
some  appreciation,  more  or  less  vague,  of  her  in- 
tellectual powers.  Though  courageous  and  de- 
termined, she  was  far  from  self-confident ;  she 
asked  herself  if  she  might  not  be  mistaking  a 
mere  fancy  for  a  faculty,  and  her  first  step  was 
to  seek  the  opinion  of  some  experienced  au- 
thority as  to  her  talent  and  chances. 

M.  de  Keratry,  a  popular  novelist,  to  whom 


DEBUT  IN  LITERATURE.  55 

she  was  recommended,  spoke  his  mind  to  her 
without  restraint.  It  was  to  the  crushing  effect 
that  a  woman  ought  not  to  write  at  all.  Her  sex, 
Madame  Dudevant  was  informed,  can  have  no 
proper  place  in  literature  whatsoever.  M.  Dela- 
touche,  proprietor  of  the  Figaro,  poet  and  nov- 
elist besides,  and  cousin  of  her  old  and  intimate 
friends  the  Duvernets,  of  La  Chatre,  was  a 
shade  more  encouraging,  even  so  far  committing 
himself  as  to  own  that,  if  she  would  not  let  her- 
self be  disgusted  by  the  struggles  of  a  beginner, 
there  might  be  a  distant  possibility  for  her  of 
making  some  sixty  pounds  a  year  by  her  pen. 
Such  specimens  of  her  fiction  as  she  submitted 
to  him  he  condemned  without  appeal,  but  he  en- 
couraged her  to  persevere  in  trying  to  improve 
upon  them,  and  advised  her  well  in  advising  her 
to  avoid  imitation  of  any  school  or  master,  and 
fearlessly  to  follow  her  own  bent. 

Meantime  he  took  her  on  to  the  staff  of  his 
paper,  then  in  its  infancy  and  comparative  ob- 
scurity. Journalism  however  was  the  depart- 
ment of  literature  least  suited  to  her  capabilities, 
and  her  fellow-contributors,  though  so  much  less 
highly  gifted  than  Madame  Dudevant,  excelled 
her  easily  in  the  manufacture  of  leaders  and 
paragraphs  to  order.  To  produce  an  article  of 
a  given  length,  on  a  given  subject,  within  a 
given  time,  was  for  her  the  severest  of  ordeals  ; 


56  GEORGE    SAND. 

here  her  exuberant  facility  itself  was  against 
her.  She  would  exhaust  the  space  allotted  to 
her,  and  find  herself  obliged  to  break  off  just  at 
the  point  when  she  felt  herself  "beginning  to 
begin."  But  she  justly  valued  this  apprentice- 
ship as  a  professional  experience,  bringing  her 
into  direct  relations  with  the  literary  world  she 
was  entering  as  a  perfect  stranger.  Once  able 
to  devote  herself  entirely  to  composition  and  to 
live  for  her  work,  she  found  her  calling  begin 
to  assert  itself  despotically.  In  a  letter  to  a 
friend,  M.  Duteil,  at  La  Chatre,  dated  about  six 
weeks  after  her  arrival  in  Paris,  she  writes  :  — 

If  I  had  forseen  half  the  difficulties  that  I  find,  I  should 
not  have  undertaken  this  enterprise.  Well,  the  more  I 
encounter  the  more  I  am  resolved  to  proceed.  Still,  I 
shall  soon  be  returning  home  again,  perhaps  without  hav- 
ing succeeded  in  launching  my  boat,  but  with  hopes  of 
doing  better  another  time,  and  with  plans  of  working 
harder  than  ever. 

Three  weeks  later  we  find  her  writing  to  her 
son's  tutor,  M.  Boucoiran,  in  the  same  strain  :  — 

I  am  more  than  ever  determined  to  follow  the  literary 
career.  In  spite  of  the  disagreeables  I  oftsn  meet  with, 
in  spite  of  days  of  sloth  and  fatigue  that  come  and 
interrupt  my  work,  in  spite  of  the  more  than  humble  life 
I  lead  here,  I  feel  that  henceforth  my  existence  is  filled. 
I  have  an  object,  a  task,  better  say  it  at  once,  a  passion. 
The  profession  of  a  writer  is  a  violent  one,  and  so  to 


DEBUT  IN  LITERATURE.  57 

speak,  indestructible.  Once  let  it  take  possession  of 
your  wretched  head,  you  cannot  stop.  I  have  not  been 
successful;  my  work  was  thought  too  unreal  by  those 
whom  I  asked  for  advice. 

But  still  she  persisted,  providing,  as  best  she 
could,  "  copy  "  for  the  Figaro,  at  seven  francs  a 
column,  and  trying  the  experiment  of  literary 
collaboration,  working  at  fictions  and  magazine 
articles,  the  joint  productions  of  herself  and 
her  friend  and  fellow-student,  Jules  Sandeau, 
who  wrote  for  the  Revue  de  Paris.  It  was 
under  his  name  that  these  compositions  ap- 
peared, Madam  Dudevant,  in  these  first  trial- 
attempts,  being  undesirous  to  bring  hers  before 
the  public. 

"I  have  no  time  to  write  home,"  she  pleads, 
petitioning  M.  Boucoiran  for  news  from  the 
country,  "  but  I  like  getting  letters  from  No- 
hant,  it  rests  my  heart  and  my  head." 

And  alluding  to  her  approaching  temporary 
return  thither,  in  accordance  with  the  terms  of 
her  agreement  with  M.  Dudevant,  she  writes  to 
M.  Charles  Duvernet :  — 

% 
I  long  to  get  back  to  Bern-,  for  I  love  my  children 

more  than  all  besides,  and,  but  for  the  hopes  of  becoming 
one  day  more  useful  to  them  with  the  scribe's  pen  than 
with  the  housekeeper's  needle,  I  should  not  leave  them 
for  so  long.  But  in  spite  of  innumerable  obstacles  I 
mean  to  take  the  first  steps  in  this  thorny  career. 


58  GEORGE    SAND. 

In  her  case  it  was  really  the  first  step  only 
that  cost  dear ;  whilst  against  the  annoyances 
with  which,  as  a  new  comer,  she  had  to  con- 
tend, there  was  ample  compensation  to  set  in 
the  novel  interests  of  the  intellectual,  political, 
and  artistic  world  stirring  around  her.  Coun- 
try life  and  peasant  life  she  had  had  the  oppor- 
tunity of  studying  from  her  youth  up  ;  of 
middle-class  society  she  had  sufficient  experi- 
ence ;  she  counted  relatives  and  friends  among 
the  noblesse,  and  had  moved  in  those  charmed 
circles  ;  but  the  republic  of  art  and  letters,  to 
which  by  nature  and  inclination  she  emphati- 
cally belonged,  was  a  land  of  promise  first 
opened  up  to  her  now.  She  was  eager  and 
impatient  to  deprovincialize  herself. 

In  the  art  galleries  of  the  Louvre,  at  the 
theatre  and  the  opera,  in  the  daily  interchange 
of  ideas  on  all  kinds  of  topics  with  her  little 
circle  of  intelligent  acquaintance,  her  mind 
grew  richer  by  a  thousand  new  impressions  and 
enjoyments,  and  rapidly  took  fresh  strength 
together  with  fresh  knowledge.  The  heavy 
practical  obstacles  that  interfere  with  such  self- 
education  on  the  part  of  one  of  her  sex  were 
seriously  aggravated  in  her  case  by  her  narrow 
income.  How  she  surmounted  them  is  well 
known  ;  assuming  on  occasion  a  disguise  which, 
imposing  on  all  but  the  initiated,  enabled  her 


DEBUT  IN  LITERATURE.  S9 

everywhere  to  pass  for  a  collegian  of  sixteen, 
and  thus  to  go  out  on  foot  in  all  weathers,  at  all 
hours,  alone  if  necessary,  unmolested  and  un- 
observed, in  theatre  or  restaurant,  boulevard  or 
reading-room.  In  defense  of  her  adoption  of 
this  strange  measure,  she  pleads  energetically 
the  perishable  nature  of  feminine  attire  in  her 
day,  —  a  day  before  double-soles  or  ulsters 
formed  part  of  a  lady's  wardrobe, —  its  incompati- 
bility with  the Jncessant  going  to  and  fro  which 
her  busy  life  required,  the  exclusion  of  her  sex 
from  the  best  part  of  a  Paris  theatre,  and  so 
forth ;  the  ineffable  superiority  of  a  costume 
which,  economy  and  comfort  apart,  secured  her 
equal  independence  with  her  men  competitors 
in  the  race,  and  identical  advantages  as  to  the 
rapid  extension  of  her  field  of  observation. 
The  practice,  though  never  carried  on  by  her  to 
such  an  extent  as  very  commonly  asserted,  was 
one  to  which  she  did  not  hesitate  to  resort  now 
and  then  in  later  years,  as  a  mere  measure  of 
convenience  —  a  measure  the  world  will  only 
tolerate  in  the  Rosalinds  and  Violas  of  the 
stage.  The  career  of  George  Sand  was,  like 
her  nature,  entirely  exceptional,  and  any  attempt 
to  judge  it  in  any  other  light  lands  us  in  hope- 
less moral  contradictions.  She  had  extraordi- 
nary incentives  to  prompt  her  to  extraordinary 
actions,  which  may  be  condemned  or  excused, 


60  GEORGE    SAND. 

but  which  there  could  be  no  greater  mistake 
than  to  impute  to  ordinary  vulgar  motives.  It 
must  also  be  remembered  that  fifty  years  ago, 
the  female  art  student  had  no  recognized  ex- 
istence. She  was  shut  out  from  that  modicum 
of  freedom  and  of  practical  advantages  it  were 
arbitrary  to  deny,  and  which  may  now  be  en- 
joyed by  any  earnest  art  aspirant  in  almost  any 
great  city.  However  unjustifiable  the  proceed- 
ing resorted  to  for  a  time  by  George  Sand  and 
Rosa  Bonheur  may  be  held  to  be,  it  cannot  pos- 
sibly be  said  they  had  no  motive  for  it  but  a 
fantastic  one. 

Writing  to  her  mother  from  Nohant,  whither 
she  had  returned  in  April  for  a  length  of  time 
as  agreed,  Madam  Dudevant  speaks  out  char- 
acteristically in  defence  of  her  love  of  indepen- 
dence : — 

I  am  far  from  having  that  love  of  pleasure,  that  need 
of  amusement  with  which  you  credit  me.  Society,  sights, 
finery,  are  not  what  I  want,  —  you  only  are  under  this 
mistake  about  me, — it  is  liberty.  To  be  all  alone  in  the 
street  and  able  to  say  to  myself,  I  shall  dine  at  four  or  at 
seven,  according  to  my  good  pleasure  ;  I  shall  go  to  the 
Tuileries  by  way  of  the  Luxembourg  instead  of  going  by 
the  Champs  Elyse'es  ;  this  is  what  amuses  me  far  more 
than  silly  compliments  and  stiff  drawing-room  assemblies. 

Such  audacious  self-emancipation,  she  was 
well  aware,  must  estrange  her  from  her  friends 


DEBUT  IN  LITERATURE  6 1 

of  her  own  sex  in  the  upper  circles  of  Parisian 
society,  and  she  anticipated  this  by  making  no 
attempt  to  renew  such  connections.  For  the 
moment  she  thought  only  of  taking  the  shortest, 
and,  as  she  judged,  the  only  way  for  a  "torpid 
country  wife,"  like  herself,  to  acquire  the  free- 
dom of  action  and  the  enlightenment  she 
needed.  Those  most  nearly  related  to  her 
offered  no  opposition.  It  was  otherwise  with 
her  mother-in-law,  the  baronne  Dudevant,  with 
whom  she  had  a  passage-of-arms  at  the  outset 
on  the  subject  of  her  literary  campaign,  here 
disapproved  in  toto. 

"  Is  it  true,"  enquired  this  lady,  "  that  it  is 
your  intention  to  print  books?" 

"  Yes,  madame." 

"  Well,  I  call  that  an  odd  notion  ! " 

"Yes,  madame." 

"  That  is  all  very  good  and  very  fine,  but  I 
hope  you  are  not  going  to  put  the  name  that  I 
bear  on  the  covers  of  printed  books  ?" 

"  Oh,  certaintly  not,  madame,  there  is  no 
danger." 

The  liberty  to  which  other  considerations 
were  required  to  give  way  was  certainly  com- 
plete enough.  The  beginning  of  July  found 
her  back  at  work  in  the  capital.  On  the  Quai 
St.  Michel  —  a  portion  of  the  Seine  embank- 
ment facing  the  towers  of  Notre  Dame,  the 


62  GEORGE    SAND. 

Sainte  Chapelle,  and  other  picturesque  monu- 
ments of  ancient  Paris  —  she  had  now  definitely 
installed  herself  in  modest  lodgings  on  the  fifth 
story.  Accepted  and  treated  as  a  comrade  by  a 
little  knot  of  fellow  literati  and  colleagues  on 
the  Figaro,  two  of  whom  — Jules  Sandeau  and 
Felix  Pyat — were  from  Berry,  like  herself;  and 
with  Delatouche,  also  a  Berrichon,  for  their 
head-master,  she  served  thus  singularly  her 
brief  apprenticeship  to  literature  and  experi- 
ence ;  —  sharing  with  the  rest  both  their  studies 
and  their  relaxations,  dining  with  then  at  cheap 
restaurants,  frequenting  clubs,  studios,  and 
theatres  of  every  degree ;  the  youthful  effer- 
vescence of  her  student-friends  venting  itself  in 
such  collegians'  pranks  as  parading  deserted 
quarters  of  the  town  by  moonlight,  iri  the  small 
hours,  chanting  lugubrious  strains  to  astonish 
the  shopkeepers.  The  only  great  celebrity 
whose  acquaintance  she  had  made  was  Balzac, 
himself  the  prince  of  eccentrics.  Although  he 
did  not  encourage  Madame  Dudevant's  literary 
ambition,  he  showed  himself  kindly  disposed 
towards  her  and  her  young  friends,  and  she 
gives  some  amusing  instances  that  canie  under 
her  notice  of  his  oddities.  Thus,  once  after  a 
little  Bohemian  dinner  at  his  lodgings  in  the 
Rue  Cassini,  he  insisted  on  putting  on  a  new 
and  magnificent  dressing-gown,  of  which  he 


DEBUT  IN  LITERATURE.  63 

was  exceedingly  vain,  to  display  to  his  guests, 
of  whom  Madame  Dudevant  was  one ;  and  not 
satisfied  therewith,  must  needs  go  forth,  thus 
accoutred,  to  light  them  on  their  walk  home. 
All  the  way  he  continued  to  hold  forth  to  them 
about  four  Arab  horses,  which  he  had  not  got 
yet,  but  meant  to  get  seon,  and  of  which, 
though  he  never  got  them  at  all,  he  firmly  be- 
lieved himself  to  have  been  possessed  for  some 
time.  "He  would  have  escorted  us  thus," 
says  Madame  Dudevant,  "from  one  extremity 
of  Paris  to  another,  if  we  had  let  him." 

Twice  again  before  the  end  of  the  year,  faith- 
ful to  her  original  intentions,  we  find  her  return- 
ing to  her  place  as  mistress  of  the  house  at  No- 
hant,  occupying  herself  with  her  children,  and 
working  at  the  novel  Indiana,  which  was  to 
create  her  reputation  the  following  year. 

Meanwhile,  a  novelette,  La  Prima  Donna, 
the  outcome  of  the  literary  collaboration  with 
Jules  Sandeau,  had  found  its  way  into  a  maga- 
zine, the  Revue  de  Paris  ;  and  was  followed  by 
a  longer  work  of  fiction,  of  the  same  double 
authorship,  entitled  Rose  et  Blanche,  published 
under  Sandeau's  JIOHI  de  plume  of  Jules  Sand. 

This  literary  partnership  was  not  to  last  long, 
and  to-day  the  novel  will  be  found  omitted  in 
the  list  of  the  respective  works  of  its  authors. 
Its  perusal  will  hardly  repay  the  curious.  The 


64  GEORGE    SAND. 

powerful  genius  of  Madame  Dudevant,  the  ele- 
gant talent  of  the  author  of  Mile,  de  la  Seig- 
lierc,  are  mostly  conspicuous  by  their  absence  in 
Rose  et  Blanclie,  or  La  Comedienne  et  la  Re"lig- 
ieuse,  an  imitative  attempt,  and  not  a  happy  one, 
in  the  style  of  fiction  then  in  vogue. 

Madame  Dudevant  had  stepped  into  the  liter- 
ary world  at  the  moment  of  the  most  ardent 
activity  of  the  Romantic  movement.  The  new 
school  was  on  the  point  of  achieving  its  earliest 
signal  triumphs.  Victor  Hugo's  first  poems  had 
just  been  followed  by  the  dramas  Hernani  and 
Marion  Delorme.  Dumas'  Antony  was  drawing 
crowded  and  enthusiastic  houses.  A  few 
months  before  the  publication  of  Rose  et  Blanche 
appeared  Notre  Dame  de  Paris.  The  passion 
for  innovation  which  had  seized  on  all  the 
younger  school  of  writers  was  leading  many 
astray.  The  strange  freaks  of  Hugo's  genius 
had,  to  quote  Madame  Dudevant's  own  expres- 
sion, excited  a  "ferocious  appetite"  for  what- 
ever was  most  outrageous,  and  set  taste,  prece- 
dent, and  probability  most  flatly  at  defiance. 
From  those  aberrations  into  which  the  great 
master's  imitators  had  been  betrayed  Madame 
Dudevant's  fine  art-instincts  were  calculated  to 
preserve  her ;  but  she  had  not  yet  learned  to 
trust  to  them  implicitly. 

Rose   et    Blanche,    though     containing    many 


DEBUT  IN  LITERATURE.  65 

clever  passages  —  waifs  and  strays  of  shrewd 
observation,  description  and  character  analysis, 
—  is  in  the  main  ill-conceived,  ill-constructed, 
and  unreal.  The  two  authors  have  sacrificed 
their  individualities  in  a  mistaken  effort  to  fol- 
low the  fashion's  lead,  resulting  in  a  most  inef- 
fective compound  of  tameness  and  sensation- 
alism. Amazing  adventures  are  undergone  by 
each  heroine  before  she  is  one -and -twenty. 
Angels  of  innocence,  they  are  doomed  to  have 
their  existences  crushed  out  by  the  heartless 
conduct  of  man,  Blanche  expiring  of  dismay 
almost  as  soon  as  she  is  led  from  the  altar,  Rose 
burying  herself  and  her  despair  in  a  convent. 
The  then  favorite  heroes  of  romance  were  of 
the  French  Byronic  type  —  young  men  of  for- 
tune who  have  exhausted  life  before  they  are 
five-and-twenty,  whose  minds  are  darkened  by 
haunting  memories  of  some  terrific  crime,  but 
who  are  none  the  less  capable  of  all  the  virtues 
and  great  elevation  of  sentiment  on  occasion. 
None  of  these  requisitions  are  left  unfulfilled 
by  the  unamiable  hero  of  Rose  et  Blanche,  a 
work  which  did  little  to  advance  the  fortunes  of 
its  authors,  and  whose  intrinsic  merits  offer  lit- 
tle warrant  for  dragging  it  out  of  the  oblivion 
into  which  it  has  been  suffered  to  drop. 

To  escape  the  influences  of  the  literary  revo- 
lution   everywhere    then    triumphant    was    of 
3 


66  GEORGE    SAND. 

course  impossible.  To  make  them  serve  her 
individual  genius  instead  of  enslaving  her  in- 
dividuality was  all  Madame  Dudevant  needed  to 
learn.  Her  friend  Balzac  had  done  this  for 
himself,  suiting  his  genius  to  the  period  without 
any  sacrifice  of  originality.  Although  not  yet 
at  the  height  of  his  fame  he  had  produced  many 
most  successful  works,  and  Madame  Dudevant, 
according  to  her  own  account,  derived  great 
profit  from  the  study  of  his  method,  although 
with  no  inclination  to  follow  in  his  direction. 
Yet  he  afterwards  observed  to  her,  "  Our  two 
roads  lead  to  the  same  goal." 

Rose  et  BlancJicy  though  little  noticed  by  the 
public,  brought  a  publisher  to  the  door,  one  Er- 
nest Dupuy,  with  an  order  for  another  novel  by 
the  same  authors.  Indiana  was  ready-written, 
and  came  in  response  to  the  demand.  But  as 
Sandeau  had  had  no  hand  whatever  in  this  com- 
position, the  signature  had  of  course  to  be 
varied.  The  publisher  wishing  to  connect  the 
new  novel  with  its  predecessor  it  was  decided 
to  alter  the  prefix  only.  She  fixed  on  George, 
as  representative  of  Berry,  the  land  of  husband- 
men ;  and  George  Sand  thus  became  pseudonym 
of  the  author  of  Indiana,  a  pseudonym  whose 
origin  imaginative  critics  have  sought  far  afield 
and  some  have  discovered  in  her  alleged  sympa- 
thy with  Kotzebue's  murderer,  Karl  Sand,  and 


DEBUT  IX  LITERATURE.  67 

political  assassination  in  general !  Its  assump- 
tion was  to  inaugurate  a  new  era  in  her  life. 

In  the  last  days  of  April,  1832,  appeared  In- 
diana, by  George  Sand.  "  I  took,"  says  Madame 
Duclcvant,  in  her  account  of  the  transaction, 
"the  1,200  francs  paid  me  by  the  publisher, 
which  to  me  were  a  little  fortune,  hoping  he 
would  see  his  money  back  again."  She  had  re- 
cently returned  from  one  of  her  periodical  visits 
to  Nohant,  accompanied  this  time  by  her  little 
girl,  whom  the  progress  already  achieved  en- 
abled her  now  to  take  into  her  charge,  and  was 
living  very  quietly  and  studiously  in  her  humble 
establishment  on  the  Ouai  St.  Michel,  when 
she  awoke  to  find  herself  famous. 

Her  success,  for  which  indeed  there  had  been 
nothing  to  prepare  her  —  neither  flattery  of 
friends,  nor  vain-glorious  ambition  within  her- 
self—  was  immediate  and  conclusive.  What- 
ever differences  of  opinion  might  exist  about  the 
book,  critics  agreed  in  recognizing  there  the 
revelation  of  a  new  writer  of  extraordinary 
power.  "  One  of  those  masters  who  have  been 
gifted  with  the  enchanter's  wand  and  mirror," 
wrote  Sainte-Beuve,  a  few  months  later,  when 
he  did  not  hesitate  to  compare  the  young  author 
to  Madame  de  Stael.  The  novel  of  sentimental 
analysis,  a  style  in  which  George  Sand  is  unsur- 
passed, was  then  a  fresh  and  promising  field. 


68  GEORGE  SAND. 

Indiana,  without  the  aid  of  marvellous  incidents, 
startling  crimes,  or  iniquitous  mysteries,  riveted 
the  attention  of  its  readers  as  firmly  as  the 
most  thrilling  tales  of  adventure  and  horror. 
It  is  a  "soul's  tragedy,"  and  that  is  all  —  the 
love-tragedy  vulgarized  since  by  repeated  treat- 
ment by  inferior  novelists,  of  a  romantic,  sensi- 
tive, passionate,  high-natured  girl,  hopelessly 
ill-mated  with  a  somewhat  tyrannical  and  stupid, 
yet  not  entirely  ill-disposed  old  colonel,  and  ex- 
posed to  the  seductions  of  a  Lovelace — the 
truth  about  whose  unloveable  character,  in  its 
profound  and  heartless  egoism,  first  bursts 
upon  her  at  the  moment  when,  maddened  by 
brutal  insult,  she  is  driven  to  claim  the  gener- 
ous devotion  he  has  proffered  a  thousand  times. 
Side  by  side  with  the  ideal  of  selfishness,  Ray- 
mon  stands  in  contrast  with  the  ideally  chival- 
rous Ralph,  Indiana's  despised  cousin,  who, 
loving  her  disinterestedly  and  in  silence,  has 
watched  over  her  as  a  guardian-friend  to  the 
last,  and  does  save  her  ultimately.  The  florid 
descriptions,  the  high-flown  strains  of  emotion, 
which  now  strike  as  blemishes  in  the  book,  were 
counted  beauties  fifty  years  since ;  and  even 
to-day,  when  reaction  has  brought  about  an 
extreme  distaste  for  emotional  writing,  they  can- 
not conceal  the  superior  ability  of  the  novelist. 
The  sentiment,  however  extravagantly  worded, 


DEBUT  IN  LITERATURE.  69 

is  genuine  and  spontaneous,  and  has  the  true 
ring  of  passionate  conviction.  The  characters 
are  vividly,  if  somewhat  closely  drawn  and  con- 
trasted, the  scenes  graphic  ;  every  page  is  col- 
ored by  fervid  imagination,  and  despite  some 
violations  of  probability  in  the  latter  portion,  out 
of  keeping  artistically  with  the  natural  character 
of  the  rest  of  the  book,  the  whole  has  the 
strength  of  that  unity  and  completeness  of  con- 
ception which  is  the  distinguishing  stamp  of  a 
genius  of  the  first  order.  The  entrain  of  the 
style  is  irresistible.  It  was  written,  she  tells 
us,  tout  d'tinjet,  under  the  force  of  a  stimulus 
from  within.  Ceasing  to  counterfeit  the  man- 
ner of  anyone,  or  to  consult  the  exigencies  of 
the  book-market,  she  for  the  first  time  ventures 
to  be  herself  responsible  for  the  inspiration  and 
the  mode  of  expression  adopted. 

The  papers  spoke  of  the  new  novel  in  high 
tones  of  praise,  the  public  read  it  with  avidity. 
The  authorship,  for  a  time,  continued  to  perplex 
people.  In  spite  of  the  masculine  pseudonym, 
certain  feminine  qualities,  niceties  of  perception 
and  tenderness,  were  plainly  recognized  in  the 
work,  but  the  possibility  that  so  vigorous  and 
well-executed  a  composition  could  come  from  a 
feminine  hand  was  one  then  reckoned  scarcely 
admissible.  Even  among  those  already  in  the 
secret  were  sceptics  who  questioned  the  author's 


70  GEORGE  SAND. 

power  to  sustain  her  success,  since  nearly  every- 
body, it  is  said,  can  produce  one  good  novel. 

"  The  success  of  Indiana  has  thrown  me  into 
dismay,"  writes  Madame  Dudevant,  in  July,  1832, 
to  M.  Charles  Duvernet,  at  La  Chatre.  "Till 
now,  I  thought  my  writing  was  without  con- 
sequence, and  would  not  merit  the  slightest 
attention.  Fate  has  decreed  otherwise.  The 
unmerited  admiration  of  which  I  have  become 
the  object  must  be  justified."  And  Valentine 
was  already  in  progress ;  and  its  publication, 
not  many  months  after  Indiana,  to  be  a  conclu- 
sive answer  to  the  challenge. 

The  season  of  1832,  in  which  George  Sand 
made  her  cttbut  in  literature,  was  marked,  in 
Paris,  by  public  events  of  the  most  tragic  char- 
acter. In  the  spring,  the  cholera  made  its  ap- 
pearance, and  struck  panic  into  the  city.  Six 
people  died  in  the  house  where  Madame  Dude- 
vant resided,  but  neither  she  nor  any  of  her 
friends  were  attacked.  She  was  next  to  be  a 
witness  of  political  disturbances  equally  terrible. 
The  disappointment  felt  by  the  Liberals  at  the 
results  of  the  Revolution  of  1830,  and  of  the 
establishment  of  Louis  Philippe's  Government, 
upon  which  such  high  hopes  had  been  founded, 
was  already  beginning  to  assert  itself  in  secret 
agitation,  and  in  the  sanguinary  street  insurrec- 
tions, such  as  that  of  June,  1832,  sanguinarily 


DEBUT  IN  LITERATURE.  /I 

repressed.  Madame  Dudevant  at  this  time  had 
no  formulated  political  creed,  and  political  sub- 
jects were  those  least  attractive  to  her.  But 
though  born  in  the  opposite  camp  she  felt  all 
her  natural  sympathies  incline  to  the  Republi- 
'can  side.  They  were  further  intensified  by 
the  scenes  of  which  she  was  an  eye-witness, 
and  which  roused  a  similar  feeling  even  among 
anti-revolutionists.  Thus  Heine,  in  giving  an 
account  of  the  struggle  mentioned  above,  and 
speaking  of  the  enthusiasts  who  sacrificed  their 
lives  in  this  desperate  demonstration,  exclaims : 
"I  am,  by  God!  no  Republican.  I  know  that  if 
the  Republicans  conquer  they  will  cut  my 
throat,  and  all  because  I  don't  admire  all  they 
admire ;  but  yet  the  tears  came  into  my  eyes  as 
I  trod  those  places  still  stained  with  their  blood. 
I  had  rather  I,  and  all  my  fellow-moderates,  had 
died  than  those  Republicans." 

Amid  such  disturbing  influences  it  is  not  sur- 
prising that  we  find  her  complaining  in  the  let- 
ter last  quoted  that  her  work  makes  no  progress ; 
but  the  lost  time  was  made  up  for  by  redoubled 
industry  during  her  summer  visit  to  Nohant. 

In  the  autumn  appeared  Valentine.  This 
second  novel  not  only  confirmed  the  triumph 
won  by  the  first,  but  was  a  surer  proof  of  the 
writer's  calibre,  as  showing  what  she  could  do 
with  simpler  materials.  Here,  encouraged  by 


72  GEORGE  SAND, 

success,  she  had  ventured  to  take  her  stand 
entirely  on  her  own  ground — dispensing  even 
with  an  incidental  trip  to  the  tropics,  which,  in 
Indiana,  strikes  as  a  misplaced  concession  to 
the  prevalent  craze  for  Oriental  coloring — and 
to  lay  the  scene  in  her  own  obscure  province  of 
Berry,  her  first  descriptions  of  which  show  her 
rare  comprehension  of  the  poetry  of  landscape. 
Like  Indiana,  Valentine  is  a  story  of  the  affec- 
tions ;  like  Indiana,  it  is  a  domestic  tragedy,  of 
which  the  girl-heroine  is  the  victim  of  a  perni- 
cious system  that  makes  of  marriage,  in  the  first 
instance,  a  mere  commercial  speculation.  In- 
deed, the  extreme  painfulness  of  the  story 
would  render  the  whole  too  repulsive  but  for 
the  charm  of  the  setting,  which  relieves  it  not 
a  little,  and  a  good  deal  of  humor  in  the  treat- 
ment of  the  minor  characters,  notably  the 
eighteenth  century  marquise,  and  the  Lhery 
family  of  peasant-flarvenus.  The  personages 
are  drawn  with  more  finish  than  those  in  In- 
diana ;  the  tone  is  more  natural  in  its  pitch. 
It  is  the  work  of  one  who  finds  in  every-day 
observation,  as  well  as  in  such  personal  emo- 
tions as  come  but  once  in  a  life-time,  the  in- 
spiration that  smaller  talents  can  derive  from 
the  latter  alone. 

In  both  her  consummate  art,  or  rather  natural 
gift  of  the  art  of  narrative,  is  the  mainstay  of 


DEBUT  IN  LITERATURE.  73 

the  fabric  her  imagination  has  reared.  That 
incomparable  style  of  hers  is  like  some  magic 
fairy-ring,  that  bears  the  wearer,  safe  and  vic- 
torious, through  manifold  perils — perils  these 
of  prolixity,  exaggeration,  and  disdain  of  care- 
ful construction.  Both  Indiana  and  Valentine, 
moreover,  contain  scenes  and  passages  offensive 
to  English  taste,  but  it  is  impossible  fairly  to 
criticise  the  fiction  of  a  land  where  freer  ex- 
pression in  speech  and  in  print  than  with  us  is 
habitually  recognized  and  practiced,  from  our 
own  standpoint  of  literary  decorum.  It  was 
not  for  this  feature  that  French  criticism  had 
already  begun  to  charge  her  books  with  danger- 
ous tendencies  (thus  contributing  largely  to 
noise  her  fame  abroad),  as  breathing  rebellion 
against  the  laws  of  present  society  ;  charges 
which,  so  far  as  Indiana  and  Valentine  are  con- 
cerned, had,  as  is  now  generally  admitted,  but 
little  foundation.  Each  is  the  story  of  an  un- 
happy marriage,  but  there  is  no  attempt  what- 
ever to  throw  contempt  on  existing  institutions, 
or  to  propound  any  theory,  unless  it  be  the 
idea — no  heresy  or  novelty  in  England  at 
least  —  that  marriage,  concluded  without  love 
on  either  side,  is  fraught  with  special  dangers 
to  the  wife,  whose  happiness  is  bound  up  with 
her  affections.  It  was  the  bold  and  uncom- 
promising manner  in  which  this  plain  fact  was 


74  GEORGE    SAND. 

brought  forward,  the  energy  of  the  protest 
against  a  real  social  abuse,  which  moved  some 
critics  to  sound  a  war-cry  for  which,  as  yet,  no 
just  warrant  had  been  given. 

Besides  these  two  novels,  containing  full 
proof  of  her  genius,  if  not  of  its  highest  em- 
ployment, there  appeared,  late  in  1832,  that 
remarkable  novelette,  La  Marquise,  revealing 
fresh  qualities  of  subtle  penetration  and  clear 
analysis.  The  flexibility  of  her  imagination,  the 
variety  in  her  modes  of  its  application,  form  an 
essential  characteristic  of  her  work.  Not  by 
any  single  novel,  nor,  indeed  by  half-a-dozen 
taken  at  random,  can  she  be  adequately  repre- 
sented. 

When  in  the  winter  of  1832  Madame  Sand 
returned  with  her  little  girl  to  Paris  after  spend- 
ing the  autumn,  as  usual,  at  Nohant,  it  was  to 
rather  more  comfortable  quarters,  on  the  Quai 
Malplaquet.  The  rapid  sale  of  her  books  was 
placing  her  in  comparatively  easy  circumstances, 
and  giving  fresh  spur  to  her  activity.  But  her 
situation  was  transforming  itself  fast ;  the 
freedom  of  obscurity  was  lost  to  her  for  ever 
from  the  day  when  the  unknown  personage, 
George  Sand,  became  the  object  of  general 
curiosity  —  of  curiosity  redoubled  in  Paris  by 
the  rumors  current  there  of  her  exceptional 
position,  eccentric  habits,  and  interesting  per- 
sonality. 


DEBUT  IN  LITERATURE.  ?$ 

The  celebrated  portrait  of  her  by  Eugene  Dela- 
croix was  painted  in  the  year  1833.  It  is  a 
three-quarter  view,  and  represents  her  wearing 
her  quasi  masculine  redingote,  with  broad  revers 
and  loosely  knotted  silk  neck-tie.  Of  some- 
what later  date  is  a  highly  interesting  drawing 
by  Calamatta,  well-known  by  engravings  ;  but 
of  George  Sand  in  her  first  youth  no  likeness  un- 
fortunately has  been  left  to  the  world.  She  has 
been  most  diversely  described  by  her  different 
contemporaries.  But  that  at  this  time  she  pos- 
sessed real  beauty  is  perfectly  evident  ;  for  all 
that  she  denies  it  herself,  and  that,  unlike  most 
women,  and  nearly  all  French  women,  she 
scorned  to  enhance  it  by  an  elaborated  toilette. 
Heine,  though  he  never  professed  himself  one 
of  her  personal  adorers,  compares  the  beauty  of 
her  head  to  that  of  the  Venus  of  Milo,  saying, 
"It  bears  the  stamp  of  ideality,  and  recalls  the 
noblest  remaining  examples  of  Greek  art."' 
Her  figure  was  somewhat  too  short,  but  her 
hands  and  feet  were  very  small  and  beautifully 
shaped.  His  acquaintance  with  her  dates  from 
the  early  years  of  her  literary  triumphs,  and  his 
description  is  in  harmony  with  Calamatta's 
presentation.  She  had  dark  curling  hair,  a 
beauty  in  itself,  falling  in  profusion  to  her 
shoulders,  well-formed  features,  pale  olive- 
tinted  complexion,  the  countenance  expressive, 


76  GEORGE    SAND. 

the  eyes  dark  and  very  fine,  not  sparkling,  but 
mild  and  full  of  feeling.  The  face  reminds  us 
of  the  character  of  "  Still  Waters,"  attributed  to 
the  Aurore  Dupin  of  fifteen  by  the  Lady  Su- 
perior of  the  English  convent.  Her  voice  was 
soft  and  muffled,  and  the  simplicity  of  her  man- 
ner has  been  remarked  on  by  those  who  sought 
her  acquaintance,  as  a  particular  charm.  Yet, 
like  all  reserved  natures,  she  often  failed  to 
attract  strangers  at  a  first  meeting.  In  general 
conversation  she  disappointed  people,  by  not 
shining.  Men  and  women,  immeasurably  her 
inferiors,  surpassed  her  in  ready  wit  and  bril- 
liant repartee.  Her  taciturnity  in  society  has 
been  somewhat  ungenerously  laid  to  a  parti 

J>ris.  She  was  one,  it  is  said,  who  took  all  and 
gave  nothing.  That  she  was  intentionally  chary 
of  her  passing  thoughts  and  impressions  to 
those  around  her,  is,  however,  sufficiently  dis- 
proved by  her  letters.  Here  she  shows  herself 
lavish  of  her  mind  to  her  correspondents.  Con- 
versation and  composition  necessitate  a  very 
different  brain  action,  and  her  marvellous 
facility  in  writing  seems  really  to  have  been 
accompanied  with  no  corresponding  readiness 
of  speech  and  reply.  Probably  it  was  only,  as 

•she  herself  states,  when  she  had  a  pen  in  her 
hand  that  her  lethargic  ideas  would  arise  and 
flow  in  order  as  they  should.  And  the  need  of 


DEBUT  IN  LITERATURE.  77 

self-expression  felt  by  all  those  who  have  not 
the  gift  of  communicating  themselves  fully  and 
easily  in  speech  or  manner,  a  strong  need  in 
her  case,  from  her  having  so  much  to  express, 
was  the  spur  that  drove  her  to  seek  and  find 
the  mode  of  so  doing  in  art. 

Her  silence  in  company  certainly  did  not  de- 
tract from  her  fascination  upon  a  closer  ac- 
quaintance. Of  those  who  fell  under  the  spell, 
the  more  fortunate  came  at  once  to  terms  of 
friendship  with  her,  which  remained  undis- 
turbed through  life.  Thus,  of  one  among  this 
numerous  brotherhood,  Francois  Rollinat,  with 
whom  she  would  congratulate  herself  on  having 
realized  the  perfection  of  such  an  alliance  of 
minds,  she  could  write  when  recording  their 
friendship,  then  already  a  quarter  of  a  century 
old,  that  it  was  still  young  as  compared  with 
some  that  she  counted,  and  that  dated  from  her 
childhood. 

Others  fell  in  love  with  her,  and  found  her 
unresponsive.  With  some  of  these,  jealousies 
and  misunderstandings  arose,  and  led  to  es- 
trangements, for  the  most  part  but  temporary. 
Yet  the  winner  of  her  heart  was  scarcely  to  be 
envied.  She  was  apt  —  she  has  herself  thus 
expressed  it  —  to  see  people  through  a  prism  of 
enthusiasm,  and  afterwards  to  recover  her 
lucidity  of  judgment.  Great,  no  doubt,  was 


?8  GEORGE   SAND. 

her  power  of  self-illusion  ;  it  betrayed  her  into 
errors  that  have  been  unsparingly  judged. 
For  her  power  of  calm  and  complete  disillusion 
she  was  perhaps  unique  among  women,  and  it 
is  no  wonder  if  mankind  have  found  it  hard  to 
forgive. 


CHAPTER  IV. 

LELIA. ITALIAN    JOURNEY. 

IT  was  less  than  two  years  since  she  had  come 
up  to  the  capital,  to  seek  her  fortunes  there  in 
literature.  Aurore  Dudevant,  hereafter  to  be 
spoken  of  as  George  Sand  (for  she  made  her 
adopted  name  more  her  own  than  that  she  had 
borne  hitherto,  and  became  George  Sand  for  her 
private  friends  as  well  as  for  the  public,)  found 
herself  raised  to  eminence  among  the  eminent, 
And  it  was  at  an  exceptionally  brilliant  epoch 
in  French  imaginative  literature  that  the  dis- 
tinction had  been  won.  Such  a  burst  of  talent 
as  that  which  signalized  the  opening  years  of 
Louis  Philippe's  reign  is  unexampled  in  French 
literary  history.  With  Hugo,  Dumas,  De 
Musset,  Balzac,  not  to  mention  lesser  stars,  the 
author  of  Indiana  and  Valentine,  although  a 
woman,  was  acknowledged  as  worthy  to  rank. 
The  artist  in  her,  a  disturbing  element  in  her 
inner  life  which  had '  driven  her  out  of  the 
spiritual  bondage  and  destitution  of  a  petty  pro- 
vincial environment  to  secure  for  herself  free- 


80  GEORGE  SAND. 

dom  and  expansion,  had  justified  the  audacity 
of  the  move  by  a  triumphant  artistic  success. 
From  this  time  onward  her  artistic  faculty  dom- 
inated her  life,  often,  probably,  unknown  to  her- 
self an  invincible  force  of  instinct  she  obeyed, 
whilst  assigning,  in  all  good  faith,  other  motives 
for  her  course  of  action,  and  for  real  or  appar- 
ent inconsequences,  that  have  been  constantly 
misrepresented  and  misunderstood. 

So  sudden  and  abrupt  a  change  would  have 
turned  all  heads  but  the  strongest.  Publishers 
competed  with  one  another  to  secure  her  next 
work.  Buloz,  proprietor  of  the  Revue  des  Deux 
Mondes,  engaged  her  to  write  regularly  for  his 
periodical,  to  which,  for  the  next  ten  years, 
she  never  ceased  to  be  a  regular  and  extensive 
contributor.  Although  the  scale  of  remunera- 
tion was  not  then  very  high  she  was  clearly  se- 
cure, so  long  as  she  allowed  nothing  to  interfere 
with  her  literary  work,  of  earning  a  sufficient 
income  for  her  own  needs.  She  had  learnt  the 
importance  of  pecuniary  independence,  and 
never  pretended  to  despise  the  reward  of  her 
industry.  To  luxury  she  was  indifferent,  but  the 
necessity  of  strict  economy  was  a  burden  she 
was  impatient  of ;  she  liked  to  have  plenty  to 
give  away,  and  was  always  excessively  liberal  to 
the  poor.  Her  little  dwelling  on  the  Quai 
Malplaquet  was  no  longer  the  hermitage  of  an 


LEU  A  —ITALIAN  JOURNEY.  8 1 

anonymous  writer  of  no  account.  The  great  in 
art  and  letters,  leading  critics,  such  as  Sainte- 
Beuve  and  Gustave  Planche,  came  eager  to  seek 
her  acquaintance,  and  delighting  to  honor  the 
obscure  student  of  a  year  ago. 

Writing  to  M.  Boucoiran  after  her  return  to 
Paris  in  December,  1832,  she  describes  her 
altered  position  :  — 

All  day  long  I  am  beset  with  visitors,  who  are  not  all 
entertaining.  It  is  a  calamity  of  my  profession,  which  I 
am  partly  obliged  to  bear.  But  in  the  evening  I  shut 
myself  up  with  my  pens  and  ink,  Solange,  my  piano,  and 
a  fire.  With  all  these  I  pass  some  right  pleasant  hours. 
No  noise  but  the  sounds  of  a  harp,  coming  I  know  not 
whence,  and  of  the  playing  of  a  fountain  under  my  win- 
dow. This  is  highly  poetical  —  pray  don't  make  game 
of  me  ! 

There  was  another  side  to  her  success.  Fame 
brought  trials  and  annoyances  that  fell  with 
double  severity  on  her  as  a  woman.  Her  door 
was  besieged  by  a  troop  of  professional  beggars, 
impostors,  impertinent  idlers,  and  inquisitive 
newsmongers.  Jealousy  and  ill-will,  inevitably 
attendant  on  sudden  good  fortune  such  as  hers, 
busied  themselves  with  direct  calumny  and  in- 
sidious misrepresentation.  No  statement  so 
unfounded,  so  wildly  improbable  about  her,  but 
it  obtained  circulation  and  credit.  Till  the  end 
of  her  life  she  remained  the  centre  of  a  cloud  of 


82  GEORGE  SAND, 

myths,  many,  to  the  present  day,  accepted  as 
gospel.  People  insisted  on  identifying  her  with 
the  heroines  of  her  novels.  Incidents,  personal 
descriptions,  nay,  whole  letters  extracted  from 
these  novels  will  be  found  literally  transcribed 
into  alleged  biographies  of  herself  and  her 
friends,  as  her  own  statement  of  matters  of  fact. 
Now,  though  the  spirit  of  her  life  is  strongly 
and  faithfully  represented  by  her  fiction  taken 
as  a  whole,  those  who  would  read  in  any  special 
novel  the  literal  record  of  any  of  the  special 
events  of  her  existence  cannot  be  too  much  on 
their  guard.  Whatever  the  material  under  treat- 
ment, George  Sand  must  retouch,  embellish, 
transform,  artist-fashion,  as  her  genius  shall  dic- 
tate, till  often  little  resemblance  is  left  between 
the  original  and  the  production  it  has  done  no 
more  than  suggest.  Romance  and  reality  are 
so  fused  together  in  these  apparent  outpourings 
of  spirit  that  her  nearest  friends  were  at  a  loss 
how  to  separate  them.  As  an  actress  into 
many  a  favorite  part,  so  could  she  throw  herself 
into  her  favorite  characters  ;  but  seldom  if  ever 
will  much  warrant  be  found  in  actual  fact  for 
identifying  these  creations  with  their  creatress. 
How,  indeed,  could  so  many-sided  a  nature  as 
hers  be  truly  represented  in  a  single  novel  ? 
Her  rare  physical  and  mental  energies  enabled 
her  to  combine  a  life  of  masculine  intellectual 


L£LIA  —  ITALIAN  JOURNE  Y.  83 

activity  with  the  more  highly  emotional  life  of 
a  woman,  and  with  vigilance  in  her  maternal 
cares.  Maurice  was  placed  in  the  spring  of  1833 
at  the  College  Henri  IV.,  at  Paris ;  thus  she 
had  now  both  son  and  daughter  near  her,  and 
watched  indefatigably  over  them,  their  childish 
illnesses  and  childish  amusements,  their  moral 
and  intellectual  training  absorbing  a  large  share 
of  her  time  and  attention.  Heine,  a  friendly 
visitor  at  her  house,  says :  — 

I  have  often  been  present  for  hours  whilst  she  gave 
her  children  a  lesson  in  French,  and  it  is  a  pity  that  the 
whole  of  the  French  Academy  could  not  have  been  pres- 
ent too,  as  it  is  quite  certain  that  they  might  have  de- 
rived great  profit  from  it. 

Not  all  the  distractions  of  fame  and  work,  of 
passionate  pleasure  or  passionate  sorrow,  ever 
relaxed  her  active  solicitude  for  the  present 
and  future  welfare  of  her  two  young  children. 
"They  give  me  the  only  real  joys  of  my  life," 
she  repeats  again  and  again. 

Lelia,  begun  immediately  after  Valentine  was 
published  in  the  spring  of  1833,  and  created  an 
immense  sensation.  Hailed  by  her  admirers  as 
a  sign  of  an  accession  of  power,  of  power  ex- 
erted in  quite  a  new  direction,  it  brought  down 
on  the  writer's  head  a  storm  of  hostile  criti- 
cism, as  a  declared  enemy  of  religion  and 


84  GEORGE  SAND. 

domestic  morality  —  enhancing  her  celebrity 
not  a  little. 

Lttia,  a  lyrical  novel  —  an  outburst  of  poeti- 
cal philosophy  in  prose,  stands  alone  among  the 
numerous  productions  of  George  Sand.  Here 
she  takes  every  sort  of  poetical  license,  in  a 
work  without  the  restrictions  of  poetic  form 
which  are  the  true  conditions  of  so  much  lati- 
tude. "Manfred"  and  "Alastor"  are  fables 
not  further  removed  from  real  life  than  is  Lttia. 
The  personages  are  like  allegorical  figures, 
emblematic  of  spiritual  qualities  on  a  grand 
scale,  the  scenes  like  the  paradisiacal  gardens 
that  visited  the  fancy  of  Aurore  Dupin  when  a 
child.  There  is  no  action.  The  interest  is  not 
in  the  characters  and  what  they  do,  but  in  what 
they  say.  The  declamatory  style,  then  so 
popular,  is  one  the  taste  for  which  has  so  com- 
pletely waned  that  LJlia  will  find  comparatively 
few  readers  in  the-  present  day,  fewer  who  will 
not  find  its  perusal  wearisome,  none  perhaps 
whose  morality,  however  weak,  will  be  seriously 
shaken  by  utterances  ever  and  anon  hovering 
on  the  perilous  confines  of  the  sublime  and  the 
ludicrous. 

L/tia,  a  female  Faust  or  Manfred,  a  myste- 
rious muse-like  heroine,  who  one  night  slecp-j 
on  the  heathery  mountain-side,  the  next  displays 
the  splendor  of  a  queen  in  palaces  and  fain-- 


LELIA—  ITALIAN  JOURNEY.  85 

like  villas  ;  her  sorely  tried  and  hapless  lover, 
Stenio,  the  poet,  who  pours  forth  odes  to  his 
own  accompaniment  on  the  harp,  and  lingers 
the  night  long  among  Alpine  precipices  brood- 
ing over  the  abyss ;  Trenmor,  the  returned 
gentleman  convict  and  Apostle  of  the  Carbon- 
ari, whose  soul  has  been  refreshed,  made  young 
and  regenerated  at  the  galleys  ;  and  the  mad 
Irish  priest,  Magnus,  are  impossible  personages, 
inviting  to  easy  ridicule,  and  neither  wisdom 
nor  folly  from  their  lips  is  likely  to  beguile  the 
ears  of  the  present  generation. 

It  is  no  novel,  but  a  poetical  essay,  fantasti- 
cally conceived  and  executed  with  the  sans  gene 
of  an  improvisatore.  For  those  who  admire  the 
genius  of  George  Sand  its  interest  as  a  psycho- 
logical revelation  remains  unabated.  Into 
L^lia,  she  owns,  she  put  more  of  her  real  self 
than  into  any  other  of  her  books  —  of  herself, 
that  is,  and  her  state  of  mind  at  the  dawn  of  a 
period  of  moral  disturbance  and  revolt.  All 
must  continue  to  recognize  there  an  extraordi- 
nary exhibition  of  poetical  power  and  musical 
style.  As  a  work  of  art  George  Sand  has  her- 
self pronounced  it  absurd,  yet  she  always 
cherished  for  it  a  special  predilection,  and,  as 
will  be  seen,  took  the  trouble  to  rewrite  it  some 
years  later,  when  in  a  happier  and  healthier 
frame  of  mind  than  that  which  inspired  this 
unique  and  most  characteristic  composition. 


86  GEORGE    SAND. 

The  note  of  despair  struck  in  L/lia,  the  depth 
of  bitter  feeling,  the  capacity  for  mental  and 
moral  speculation  and  suffering  it  seemed  to 
disclose,  astounded  many  of  her  familiar  ac- 
quaintance. "  LJlia  is  a  fancy-type,"  so  writes 
to  the  author  her  friend  and  neighbor  in  Berry, 
Jules  Neraud,  an  ardent  naturalist,  whose 
botanical  and  entomological  pursuits  she  had 
often  shared  :  "  it  is  not  like  you  —  you  who  are 
merry,  dance  the  bourrte,  appreciate  lepidoptera, 
do  not  despise  puns,  who  are  not  a  bad  needle- 
woman, and  make  very  good  preserves.  Is  it 
possible  you  should  have  thought  so  much,  felt 
so  much,  without  anyone  having  any  idea  of 
it  ? " 

LJlia  was  certainly  the  expression  of  a  new 
phase  in  her  mind's  history,  a  moral  crisis  she 
could  not  escape,  which  was  all  the  more  severe 
for  her  having,  as  she  remarks,  reached  her 
thirtieth  year  without  having  opened  her  eyes 
to  the  realities  of  life.  Till  the  time  of  her 
coming  to  Paris,  for  very  dearth  of  outward  im- 
pressions, she  had  lived  chiefly  in  dreams,  the 
life  of  all  others  most  favorable  to  the  pro- 
longation of  ignorance  and  credulity.  The 
liberty  and  activity  she  had  enjoyed  for  the  last 
two  years  were  fatal  to  Utopian  theories. 

It  was  not  only  the  bitterness  that  springs 
from  disenchantment  in  individuals,  the  sense 


LELIA  —  ITALIAN  JOURNE  Y.  87 

of  the  miserable  insufficiency  of  human  love  to 
satisfy  her  spiritual  aspirations  producing  "  that 
widely  concluding  unbelief  which,"  as  her 
sister  in  greatness  has  said,  "we  call  knowl- 
edge of  the  world,  but  which  is  really  disappoint- 
ment in  you  and  in  me."  George  Sand  was  one 
to  whom  scepticism  was  intolerable.  Pessimis- 
tic doctrines  were  fatal  to  her  mind's  equili- 
brium, and  private  experience  and  outward 
intellectual  influences  were  driving  her  to  dis- 
trust all  objects  of  her  previous  worship,  human 
and  divine.  The  moment  was  one  when  the 
most  fundamental  social  and  religious  principles 
were  being  called  in  question. 

"Nothing  in  my  old  beliefs,"  she  writes, 
"  was  sufficiently  formulated  in  me,  from  a 
social  point  of  view,  to  help  me  to  struggle 
against  this  cataclysm  ;  and  in  the  religious  and 
socialistic  theories  of  the  moment  I  did  not 
find  light  enough  to  contend  with  the  darkness." 
The  poet's  creed,  with  which  her  mind  had 
hitherto  rested  satisfied,  was  shaken,  and  ap- 
peared to  prove  a  false  one.  She  was  staggered 
by  the  infinity  of  evil,  misery,  and  injustice, 
which  dwellers  in  great  cities  are  not  allowed 
to  forget,  the  problem  of  humanity,  the  eternal 
mystery  of  suffering  and  wrong  predominant  in 
a  world  on  the  beneficence  of  whose  Supreme 
Power  all  her  faiths  were  founded. 


88  GEORGE    SAND. 

Her  mental  revolt  and  suffering  found  vent 
in  L/lia,  which  it  was  an  immense  relief  to  her 
to  write.  Characteristic  as  an  exhibition  of 
feeling  and  of  mastery  of  language,  it  is  not  in 
the  least  typical  of  her  fiction.  Yet,  but  for 
Ltfia,  and  its  successor  Jacques,  it  is  impossible 
to  point  to  a  work  of  hers  that  would  ever  have 
lastingly  stamped  her,  in  the  public  mind,  as  an 
expounder  of  dangerous  theories.  In  Ltfia, 
however,  which  is  strongly  imbued  with  Byronic 
coloring,  she  had  chosen  to  pose  somewhat  as 
the  proud  angel  in  rebellion  ;  and  the  immediate 
effect  of  hostile  criticism  was  to  confirm  her 
in  the  position  taken  up.  Neither  LJlia  nor 
Jacques  combined  the  elements  of  lasting  popu- 
larity with  those  of  instant  success  ;  but  they 
roused  a  stir  and  strife  which  created  an  im- 
pression of  her  as  a  writer  systematically  inimi- 
cal to  religion  and  marriage  —  an  impression 
almost  ludicrously  at  variance  with  facts,  taking 
her  fiction  as  a  whole,  but  which  has  only 
recently  begun  to  give  way,  in  this  country,  to  a 
juster  estimate  of  its  tendencies. 

The  morality  of  LJlia,  which  it  is  rather 
difficult  to  discuss  seriously  in  the  present  day, 
both  the  personages  and  their  environment 
being  too  preternatural  for  any  direct  applica- 
tion to  be  drawn  from  them,  as  reflecting 
modern  society,  found  indiscreet  champions  as 


LELIA  —  ITALIAN  JO  URNE  Y.  89 

determined  as  its  aggressors.  Violently  de- 
nounced by  M.  Capo  de  Feuillide,  of  the  Europe 
littfraire,  it  was  warmly  defended  by  M.  Gustave 
Planche,  in  the  Revue  des  Deux  Mondes.  The 
war  of  words  grew  so  hot  between  them  that  a 
challenge  and  encounter  were  the  result  — 
surely  unique  in  the  annals  of  duelling.  The 
swords  of  the  critics  fortunately  proved  more 
harmless  than  their  words. 

From  the  morbid  depression  that  had  tor- 
mented her  mind  and  imagination,  and  has  its 
literary  memorial  in  Lttia,  she  was  to  find  a 
timely,  though  but  a  temporary  rescue,  in  the 
charm  of  a  new  acquaintance  —  the  delighting 
society  of  a  poetic  mind  of  an  order  not  inferior 
to  her  own. 

It  was  in  August,  1833,  at  a  dinner  given  by 
Buloz  to  the  staff  of  the  Revue  des  Deux  Mondes, 
that  George  Sand  first  made  the  personal 
acquaintance  of  Alfred  de  Musset,  then  in  his 
twenty-third  year,  and  already  famous  through 
his  just  published  poem,  Rolla,  and  his  earlier 
dramas,  Andrea  del  Sarto  and  Les  Caprices  de 
Marianne.  He  rapidly  became  enamored  of  the 
author  of  Le"lia,  who  for  her  part  felt  powerfully 
the  attraction  of  his  many  admirable  qualities, 
mutual  enchantment  leading  them  so  far  as  to 
believe  they' could  be  the  hero  and  heroine  of  a 
happy  love  tale.  In  a  letter  of  September  21, 


90  GEORGE  SAND. 

addressed  to  her  friend  and  correspondent 
Sainte-Beuve,  whom  she  had  made  the  confidant 
of  her  previous  depression  and  strange  moods  of 
gloom,  she  writes  of  herself  as  lifted  out  of  such 
dangers  by  a  happiness  beyond  any  she  had 
imagined,  restpring  youth  to  her  heart  —  the 
happiness  accorded  her  by  the  poet's  society 
and  his  preference  for  her  own.  De  Musset,  at 
this  time,  would  have  given  the  world  to  have 
been  able  to  make  her  his  wife. 

The  story  of  their  short-lived  infatuation  and 
of  the  swift-following  mutual  disenchantment, — 
a  story  which,  says  Sainte-Beuve,  has  become 
part  of  the  romance  of  the  nineteenth  century, 
—  is  perhaps  of  less  consequence  here  than 
in  the  life  of  De  Musset,  f  in  whom  the  over- 
sensitiveness  of  genius  was  not  allied  with  the 
extraordinary  healthy  vitality  which  enabled 
George  Sand  to  come  out  of  the  most  terrible 
mental  experiences  unembittered,  with  the  bal- 
ance of  her  mind  unshaken,  and  her  powers 
unimpaired.  Yet  that  he  acquired  an  empire 
over  her  no  other  ever  acquired  there  is  much 
to  indicate.  It  took  her  from  France  for  a 
while,  from  her  children,  her  friends  —  and  the 
breaking  of  the  spell  set  her  at  war,  not  only 

t  The  biography  of  Alfred  De  Musset,  by  Paul  De  Musset, 
translated  from  the  French  by  Harriet  W.  Preston.  Boston, 
Roberts  Brothers. 


LEU  A  —  ITALIAN  JO  URN E  Y.  9 1 

with  him,  but  for  a  while  with  herself,  with  life, 
and  her  fellow  creatures. 

In  the  last  days  of  1833,  she  and  the  author 
of  Rolla  started  on  a  journey  to  Italy,  where 
George  Sand  spent  six  months,  and  where  she 
has  laid  the  scene  of  a  number  of  her  novels : 
the  first  and  best  part  of  Consuelo,  La  Derniere 
Aldini,  Leone,  Leoni,  La  Daniella,  and  others. 
The  spirit  of  that  land  she  has  caught  and  repro- 
duced perhaps  more  successfully  than  any  other 
of  the  many  novelists  who  have  chosen  it  for  a 
frame  —  of  Italy  as  the  artist's  native  country, 
that  is  —  not  the  Italy  of  political  history,  nor  of 
the  Medici,  but  the  Italy  that  is  the  second  home 
of  painters,  poets,  and  musicians.  Can  any- 
thing be  more  enjoyable,  and  at  the  same  time 
more  vividly  true,  than  George  Sand's  delinea- 
tions of  Venice  ;  and,  in  the  first  of  the  Lettres 
d'un  Voyageur,  the  pictures  given  of  her  wan- 
derings on  the  shores  of  the  Brenta,  of  Bas- 
sano,  the  Brenta  valley,  Oliero,  Possagno,  Asolo, 
a  delicious  land,  till  quite  recently  as  little 
tourist-trodden  as  in  1834?  What  a  contrast 
to  the  purely  imaginary  descriptions  in  LJlia, 
written  before  those  beauties  had  appeared  to 
her  except  in  dreams  ! 

From  Genoa  the  travellers  journeyed  to  Pisa, 
Florence,  and  thence  to  Venice,  where  first 
George  Sand  felt  herself  really  at  home  in  Italy. 


92  GEORGE    SAND. 

The  architecture,  the  simplicity  of  Venetian 
life  and  manners,  the  theatres — from  the  opera- 
houses,  where  Pasta  and  Donzelli  were  singing, 
down  to  the  national  drama  of  Pulchinello  — 
the  pictures,  the  sea,  the  climate,  combined  to 
make  of  it  a  place  of  residence  so  perfectly  to 
her  mind,  that  again  and  again  in  her  letters 
she  expresses  her  wish  that  she  could  bring  over 
her  children  and  there  fix  her  abode. 

"  It  is  the  only  town  I  can  love  for  its  own 
sake,"  she  says  of  it.  "  Other  cities  are  like 
prisons,  which  you  put  up  with  for  the  sake  of 
your  fellow-prisoners."  This  Italian  journey 
marks  a  fresh  stage  in  her  artistic  development, 
quite  apart  from  the  attendant  romantic  circum- 
stances, the  alleged  disastrous  consequences  to 
a  child  of  genius  less  wise  and  fortunate  than 
herself,  which  has  given  an  otherwise  dispro- 
portionate notoriety  to  this  brief  episode. 

George  Sand  was  no  doubt  fatally  in  error 
when  she  persuaded  herself,  and  even  succeeded 
in  persuading  the  poet's  anxious  mother,  that 
she  had  it  in  her  to  be  his  guardian  angel,  and 
reform  him  miraculously  in  a  short  space  of 
time  ;  and  that  because  he  had  fallen  in  love 
with  her  she  would  know  how  to  make  him  alter 
a  way  of  life  he  had  no  abiding  desire  to  aban- 
don. Such  a  task  demands  a  readiness  not 
merely  for  self-sacrifice,  but  for  self -suppression ; 


LEU  A  —  ITALIAN  JOURNE  Y.  93 

and  her  individuality  was  far  too  pronounced  to 
merge  itself  for  long  in  ministering  to  another's. 
She  never  seems  to  have  possessed  the  slightest 
moral  ascendancy  over  him,  beyond  the  power 
of  wounding  him  very  deeply  by  the  change  in 
her  sentiments,  however  much  he  might  feel 
•himself  to  blame  for  it. 

The  history  of  the  separation  of  the  lovers  — 
of  De  Musset's  illness,  jealousy,  and  departure 
from  Venice  alone  —  is  a  thrice-told  tale.  Like 
the  subject  of  "The  Ring  and  the  Book,"  it  has 
been  set  forth,  by  various  persons,  variously 
interested,  with  correspondingly  various  color- 
ing. The  story,  as  told  by  George  Sand  in  her 
later  novel,  Elle  et  Lui,  is  substantially  the 
same  as  one  related  by  De  Musset  in  his  Con- 
fession (Tun  Enfant-du  Siecle,  published  two 
years  after  these  events,  and  in  which,  if  it  is  to 
be  regarded  as  reflecting  personal  idiosyncrasies 
in  the  slightest  degree,  the  poet  certainly  makes 
himself  out  as  the  most  insupportable  of  human 
companions.  None  the  less  did  the  publication 
of  Elle  et  Lui,  a  quarter  of  a  century  later,  pro- 
voke a  savage  retort  from  the  deceased  poet's 
brother,  in  Lui  et  Elle.  Finally,  in  Lni,  a  third 
novelist,  Madame  Colet,  presented  the  world 
with  a  separate  version  of  the  affair  from  one 
who  imagined  she  could  have  made  up  to  the 
poet  for  what  he  had  lost. 


94  GEORGE   SAND. 

But  it  needs  no  deep  study  of  human  nature, 
or  yet  of  these  novels,  to  understand  the  imprac- 
ticability of  two  such  minds  long  remaining 
together  in  unity.  Genius,  in  private  life,  is 
apt  to  be  a  torment  —  its  foibles  demanding 
infinite  patience,  forbearance,  nay,  affectionate 
blindness,  in  those  who  would  minister  to  its 
happiness,  and  mitigate  the  worst  results  of 
those  foibles  themselves.  Certainly  George 
Sand,  for  a  genius,  was  a  wonderfully  equable 
character ;  her  "  satanic"  moods  showed  them- 
selves chiefly  in  pen  and  ink  ;  her  nerves  were 
very  strong,  the  balance  of  her  physical  and 
mental  organization  was  splendidly  even,  as 
one  imagines  Shakespeare's  to  have  been.  But 
the  very  vigor  of  her  character,  its  force  of  self- 
assertion,  unfitted  her  to  be  the  complement  to 
any  but  a  very  yielding  nature.  The  direct 
influence  a  passive,  merely  receptive  spirit 
would  have  accepted,  and  gratefully,  was  soon 
felt  as  an  intolerable  burden  by  a  mind  in  many 
ways  different  from  her  own,  but  with  the  same 
imperious  instinct  of  freedom,  and  as  little  cap- 
able of  playing  anvil  to  another  mind  for  long. 
He  rebelled  against  her  ascendancy,  but  suf- 
fered from  the  spell.  She  was  no  Countess 
Guiccioli,  content  to  adore  and  be  adored,  and 
exercise  an  indirect  power  for  good  on  a  capri- 
cious lover.  Her  logical  mind,  energetic  and 


LELIA  —  ITALIAN  JOURNE  Y.  95 

independent,  grew  impatient  of  the  seeming 
inconsistencies  of  her  gifted  companion ;  and 
when  at  last  she  began  to  perceive  in  them  the 
fatal  conditions  of  those  gifts  themselves,  only 
compassion  survived  in  her,  as  she  thought,  and 
compassion  was  cold. 

How  could  De  Musset,  with  such  an  excellent 
example  of  prudence,  regular  hours,  good  sense, 
calm  self-possession,  and  ceaseless  literary  in- 
dustry as  hers  before  his  eyes,  not  be  stirred  up 
to  emulate  such  admirable  qualities  ?  But  her 
reason  made  him  unreasonable  ;  the  indefatiga- 
bility  of  her  pen  irritated  his  nerves,  and  made 
him  idle  out  of  contradiction  ;  her  homilies  pro- 
voked only  fresh  imprudences  —  as  though  he 
wanted  to  make  proof .  of  his  independence 
whilst  secretly  feeling  her  dominion — a  phe- 
nomenon with  which  highly  nervous  people  will 
sympathize  not  a  little,  but  which  was  perfectly 
inexplicable  to  George  Sand. 

His  genius  was  of  a  more  delicate  essence 
than  hers ;  he  has  struck,  at  times,  a  deeper 
note.  But  his  nature  was  frailer,  his  muse  not 
so  easily  within  call,  his  character  as  intolerant 
of  restraint  as  her  own,  but  less  self-sufficing  ; 
and  the  morbid  taint  of  thought  then  prevalent, 
and  which  her  natural  optimism  and  better 
balanced  faculties  enabled  her  to  throw  off  very 
shortly,  had  entered  into  him  ineffaceably. 


96  GEORGE    SAND. 

Whether  or  not  she  brought  a  fresh  blight  on 
his  mind,  she  certaintly  failed  to  cure  it. 

The  spring  had  hardly  begun  when  De 
Musset  was  struck  down  by  fever.  George 
Sand,  who  had  previously  been  very  ill  herself,' 
nursed  him  through  his  attack  with  great  devo- 
tion ;  and  in  six  weeks'  time  he  was  restored  to 
health,  if  not  to  happiness.  Theirs  was  at  an 
end,  as  they  recognized,  and  agreed  to  part  — 
"for  a  time,  perhaps,  or  perhaps  for  ever,"  she 
wrote,  —  with  their  attachment  broken  but  not 
destroyed. 

It  was  early  in  April  that  De  Musset  started 
on  his  homeward  journey.  George  Sand  saw 
him  on  his  way  as  far  as  Vicenza,  and  ere 
returning  to  Venice,  made  a  little  excursion  in 
the  Alps,  along  the  course  of  the  Brenta.  "  I 
have  walked  as  much  as  four-and-twenty  miles 
a  day,"  she  writes  to  M.  Boucoiran,  "and  found 
out  that  this  sort  of  exercise  is  very  good  for  me, 
both  morally  and  physically.  Tell  Buloz  I  will 
write  some  letters  for  the  Revue,  upon  my 
pedestrian  tours.  I  came  back  into  Venice 
with  only  seven  centimes  in  my  pocket,  other- 
wise I  should  have  gone  as  far  as  the  Tyrol; 
but  the  want  of  baggage  and  money  obliged  me 
to  return.  In  a  few  days  I  shall  start  again, 
and  cross  over  the  Alps  by  the  gorges  of  the 
Piave." 


LELIA  —  ITALIAN  JOURNE  Y.  97 

And  the  spring's  delights  on  the  Alpine 
borders  of  Lombardy  are  described  by  her  con 
amore,  in  the  promised  letters : — 

The  country  was  not  yet  in  its  full  splendor;  the 
fields  were  of  a  faint  green,  verging  on  yellow,  and  the 
leaves  only  coming  into  bud  on  the  trees.  But  here 
and  there  the  almonds  and  peaches  in  flower  mixed 
their  garlands  of  pink  and  white  with  the  dark  clumps  of 
cypress.  Through  the  midst  of  this  far-spreading  garden 
the  Brenta  flowed  swiftly  and  silently  over  her  sandy 
bed,  between  two  large  banks  of  pebbles,  and  the  rocky 
debris  which  she  tears  out  of  the  heart  of  the  Alps,  and 
with  which  she  furrows  the  plains  in  her  days  of  anger. 
A  semi-circle  of  fertile  hills,  overspread  with  those  long 
festoons  of  twisting  vine  that  suspend  themselves  from 
all  the  trees  in  Venetia,  made  a  near  frame  to  the  picture; 
and  the  snowy  mountain-heights,  sparkling  in  the  first 
rays  of  sunshine,  formed  an  immense  second  border, 
standing,  as  if  cut  out  in  silver,  against  the  solid  blue  of 
the  sky. 

None  of  these  excursions,  however,  were  ever 
carried  very  far.  For  the  next  three  months 
she  remained  almost  entirely  stationary  at 
Venice,  her  head-quarters.  She  had  taken 
apartments  for  herself  in  the  interior  of  the  city, 
in  a  little  low-built  house,  along  the  narrow, 
green,  and  yet  limpid  canal,  close  to  the  Ponte 
dei  Barcaroli.  "There,"  she  tells  us,  "alone  all 
the  afternoon,  never  going  out  except  in  the 
evening  for  a  breath  of  air,  working  at  night  as 
4 


98  GEORGE  SAND. 

well,  to  the  song  of  the  tame  nightingales  that 
people  all  Venetian  balconies,  I  wrote  Andrt, 
Jacques,  Mattca,  and  the  first  Lettres  d'un  Voy- 
ageur." 

None  can  read  the  latter  and  suppose  that  the 
suffering  of  the  recent  parting  was  all  on  one 
side.  The  poet  continued  to  correspond  with 
her,  and  the  consciousness  of  the  pain  she  had 
inflicted  she  was  clearly  not  sufficiently  indif- 
ferent herself  to  support.  But  neither  De 
Musset  nor  any  other  in  whom,  through  the 
"  prism  of  enthusiasm,"  she  may  have  seen 
awhile  a  hero  of  romance,  was  ever  a  primary 
influence  on  her  life.  These  were  two.  Firstly, 
her  children,  who  although  at  a  distance  were 
seldom  absent  from  her  thoughts.  Of  their 
well-being  at  school  and  at  home  respectively, 
she  was  careful  to  keep  herself  informed,  down 
to  the  minutest  particulars,  by  correspondents 
in  Paris  and  at  Nohant,  whence  no  opposition 
whatever  was  raised  by  its  occupier  to  her  pro- 
longed absence  abroad.  Secondly,  her  art- 
vocation.  She  wrote  incessantly  ;  and  inde- 
pendently of  the  pecuniary  obligations  to  do  so 
which  she  put  forward,  it  is  obvious  that  she 
had  become  wedded  to  this  habit  of  work. 
"  The  habit  has  become  a  faculty  —  the  faculty 
a  need.  I  have  thus  come  to  working  for 
thirteen  hours  at  a  time  without  making  myself 


LEU  A  —  ITALIAN  JOURNE  Y.  99 

ill ;  seven  or  eight  a  day  on  an  average,  be  the 
task  done  better  or  worse,"  she  writes  to  M. 
Chatiron,  from  Venice,  in  March.  Sometimes, 
as  with  Leone  Lconi,  she  would  complete  a  novel 
in  a  week ;  a  few  weeks  later  it  was  in  the 
Revue  des  Deux  Mondes.  Such  haste  she  after- 
ward deprecated,  and,  like  all  other  workers, 
she  aspired  to  a  year's  holiday  in  which  to 
devote  herself  to  the  study  of  the  masterpieces 
of  modern  literature  ;  but  the  convenient  season 
for  such  suspension  of  her  own  productive 
activity  never  came.  And  whilst  at  Venice  she 
found  herself  literally  in  want  of  money  to  leave 
it.  Buloz  had  arranged  with  her  that  she 
should  contribute  thirty-two  pages  every  six 
weeks  to  his  periodical  for  a  yearly  stipend  of 
;£i6o.  She  had  anticipated  her  salary  for  the 
expenses  of  her  Italian  journey,  and  must  acquit 
herself  of  the  arrears  due  before  she  could  take 
wing. 

Jacques,  the  longest  of  the  novels  written  at 
Venice,  afforded  fresh  grounds  to  those  who 
taxed  her  works  with  hostility  to  social  institu- 
tions. Without  entering  into  the  vexed  ques- 
tion of  the  right  of  the  artist  in  search  of  variety 
to  exercise  his  power  on  any  theme  that  may 
invite  to  its  display,  and  of  the  precise  bearing 
of  ethical  rules  on  works  of  imagination,  it  is 
permissible  to  doubt  that  Jacques,  however 


100  GEORGE  SAND. 

bitter  the  sentiments  of  the  author  at  that  time 
regarding  the  marriage  tie,  ever  seriously  dis- 
turbed the  felicity  of  any  domestic  household  in 
the  past  or  present  day.  It  is  too  lengthy  and 
too  melancholy  to  attract  modern  readers,  who 
care  little  to  revel  in  the  luxuries  of  woe,  so 
relished  by  those  of  a  former  age.  We  cannot 
do  better  than  quote  the  judgment  pronounced 
by  Madame  Sand  herself,  thirty  years  later,  on 
this  work  of  pure  sentimentalism  —  generated 
by  an  epoch  thrown  into  commotion  by  the 
passionate  views  of  romanticism  —  the  epoch 
of  Rene,  Lara,  Childe  Harold,  Werther,  types 
of  desperate  men  ;  life  weary,  but  by  no  means 
weary  of  talking.  "Jacques"  she  observes, 
"belonged  to  this  large  family  of  disillusioned 
thinkers  ;  they  had  their  raison  d'etre,  historical 
and  social.  He  comes  on  the  scene  in  the 
novel,  already  worn  by  deceptions  ;  he  thought 
to  revive  through  his  love,  and  he  does  not  re- 
vive. Marriage  was  for  him  only  the  drop  of 
bitterness  that  made  the  cup  overflow.  He 
killed  himself  to  bequeath  to  others  the  hap- 
piness for  which  he  cared  not,  and  in  which  he 
believed  not." 

Jacques,  taken  as  a  plaidoyer  against  domestic 
institutions,  singularly  misses  its  aim .  As 
critics  have  remarked,  some  of  the  most  elo- 
quent  pages  are  those  that  treat  of  married 


LELIA  —ITALIAN  JOURNE  Y.          IOI 

bliss.  Our  sympathies  are  entirely  with  the 
wronged  husband  against  his  silly  little  wife. 
It  is  a  kindred  work  to  L/lia,  and  its  faults  are 
the  same;  but  whilst  dealing  ostensibly  with 
real  life  and  possible  human  beings  it  cannot 
like  Le'lia,  be  placed  apart,  and  retain  interest 
as  a  literary  curiosity. 

AndrJ'is  a  very  different  piece  of  work  and  a 
little  masterpiece  of  its  kind.  The  author,  in 
her  preface,  tells  us  how,  whilst  mechanically 
listening  to  the  incessant  chatter  of  the  Vene- 
tian sempstresses  in  the  next  room  to  her  own, 
she  was  struck  by  the  resemblance  between  the 
mode  of  life  and  thought  their  talk  betrayed, 
and  that  of  the  same  class  of  girls  at  La  Chatre  ; 
and  how  in  the  midst  of  Venice,  to  the  sound  of 
the  rippling  waters  stirred  by  the  gondolier's 
oar,  of  guitar  and  serenade,  and  within  sight  of 
the  marble  palaces,  her  thoughts  flew  back  to 
the  dark  and  dirty  streets,  the  dilapidated 
houses,  the  wretched  moss-grown  roofs,  the 
shrill  concerts  of  the  cocks,  cats,  and  children 
of  the  little  French  provincial  town.  She 
dreamt  also  of  the  lovely  meadows,  the  scented 
hay,  the  little  running  streams,  and  the  floral 
researches  she  had  been  fond  of.  This  tenacity 
of  her  instincts  was  a  safeguard  she  may  have 
sometimes  rebelled  against  as  a  chain  ;  it  was 
with  her  an  essential  feature,  and,  despite  all 
vagaries,  gave  a  great  unity  to  her  life. 


102  GEORGE    SAND. 

"Venice,"  she  writes  to  M.  Chatiron  in  June, 
"with  her  marble  staircases  and  her  wonderful 
climate,  does  not  make  me  forget  anything  that 
has  been  dear  to  me.  Be  sure  that  nothing  in 
me  dies.  My  life  has  its  agitations ;  destiny 
pushes  me  different  ways,  but  my  heart  does 
not  repudiate  the  past.  Old  memories  have  a 
power  none  can  ignore,  and  myself  less  than 
another.  I  love  on  the  contrary  to  recall  them, 
and  we  shall  soon  find  ourselves  together  again 
in  the  old  nest  at  Nohant."  Andre  she  con- 
sidered the  outcome  of  this  feeling  of  nostalgia. 
In  it  she  has  put  together  the  vulgar  elements 
of  inferior  society  in  a  common-place  country 
town,  and  produced  a  poem,  though  one  of  the 
saddest.  If  the  florist  heroine,  Genevieve,  is 
a  slightly  idealized  figure,  the  story  and  general 
character-treatment  are  realistic  to  a  painful 
degree.  There  is  more  power  of  simple  pathos 
shown  here  than  is  common  in  the  works  of 
George  Sand.  Andre"  is  a  refreshing  contrast, 
in  its  simplicity  and  brevity,  to  the  inflation  of 
Le"lia  &&&  Jacques.  It  was  an  initial  essay,  and 
a  model  one,  in  a  style  with  better  claims  to 
enduring  popularity. 

As  the  summer  advanced,  George  Sand  found 
herself  free  to  depart,  and  started  on  her  way 
back  to  France,  famishing,  as  she  tells  us,  for 
the  sight  of  her  children.  Her  grand  anxiety 


LELIA  —  ITALIAN  JO URNE  Y.  1 03 

was  to  reach  her  destination  in  time  for  the 
breaking-up  day  and  distribution  of  prizes  at 
the  College  Henri  IV.  "  I  shall  be  at  Paris 
before  then,"  she  writes  from  Milan,  to  her  son, 
"  if  I  die  on  the  way,  and  really  the  heat  is  such 
that  one  might  die  of  it."  From  Milan  she 
journeyed  over  the-  Simplon  to  the  Rhone  val- 
ley, Martigny,  Chamounix,  and  Geneva,  perform- 
ing great  part  of  the  way  on  foot.  She  reached 
Paris  in  the  middle  of  August,  and  a  few  days 
later  started  with  her  boy  for  Nohant,  where 
Solange  had  spent  the  time  during  her  mother's 
absence,  and  where  they  remained  together  for 
the  holidays.  Here  too  she  was  in  the  midst 
of  a  numerous  circle  of  friends  of  both  sexes, 
in  whose  staunch  friendliness  she  found  a  solace 
of  which  she  stood  in  real  need. 


CHAPTER  V. 

MENTAL  DEVELOPMENT. 

THE  period  immediately  following  George 
Sand's  return  from  Italy  in  August  1834,  was  a 
time  of  transition,  both  in  her  outer  and  inner 
life.  If  undistinguished  by  the  production  of 
any  novel  calculated  to  create  a  fresh  sensation, 
it  shows  no  abatement  of  literary  activity. 
This,  as  we  have  seen,  had  become  to  her  a 
necessity  of  nature.  Neither  vicissitudes  with- 
out nor  commotions  within,  though  they  might 
direct  or  stimulate,  seem  to  have  acted  as  a 
check  on  the  flow  of  her  pen. 

During  the  first  twelvemonth  she  continued 
to  reside  alternately  at  Nohant,  whither  she 
came  with  her  son  and  daughter  for  their  holi- 
days—  Solange  being  now  placed  in  a  children's 
school  kept  by  some  English  ladies  at  Paris,  — 
and  her  "  poet's  garret,"  as  she  styled  her  third 
floor  appartement  on  the  Quai  Malplaquet. 

This  winter  saw  the  ending  for  herself  and 
De  Musset  of  their  hapless  romance.  An 
approach  to  complete  reconciliation  —  for  the 


MENTAL    DEVELOPMENT.  105 

existing  partial  enstrangement  had  been  dis- 
covered to  be  more  unbearable  than  all  besides 
—  led  to  stormy  scenes  and  violent  discord,  and 
resulted  before  very  long  in  mutual  avoidance, 
which  was  to  be  final.  It  is  said  that  forgive- 
ness is  the  property  of  the  injured,  and  it 
should  be  remembered  that  whenever  De 
Musset's  name  is  mentioned  by  George  Sand  it 
is  with  the  admiring  respect  of  one  to  whom 
his  genius  made  that  name  sacred,  and  who 
refused  to  the  end  of  his  life  to  use  the  easy 
weapon  offered  her  by  his  notorious  frailties  for 
vindicating  herself  at  his  expense.  And,  how- 
ever pernicious  the  much  talked  of  effect  on  De 
Musset's  mind,  it  is  but  fair  to  the  poet  to 
recollect  that  it  is  no  less  true  of  him  than  of 
George  Sand  that  his  best  work,  that  with 
which  his  fame  has  come  chiefly  to  associate 
itself,  was  accomplished  after  this  painful 
experience. 

Into  her  own  mental  state  —  possibly  at  this 
time  the  least  enviable  of  the  two  —  we  get 
some  glimpses  in  the  Lettres  d'un  Voyageur  of 
the  autumn  1834,  and  winter  1834-35.  Here, 
again,  we  should  be  content  with  gathering  a 
general  impression,  and  not  ingenuously  read 
literal  facts  in  all  the  self-accusations  and 
recorded  experiences  of  the  "  voyageur" — a 
semi-fictitious  personage  whose  improvisations 


106  GEORGE    SAND. 

were,  after  all,  only  a  fresh  exercise  which 
George  Sand  had  invented  for  her  imagination 
taking  herself  and  reality  for  a  starting-point 
merely,  a  suggestive  theme. 

But  the  despair  and  disgust  of  life,  to  which 
both  these  and  her  private  letters  give  such 
uncompromising  and  eloquent  expression,  indu- 
bitably reflect  her  feelings  at  this  moral  crisis  — 
the  feelings  of  one  who  having  openly  braved 
the  laws  of  society,  to  become  henceforward  a 
law  unto  herself,  recognizes  that  she  has  only 
found  her  way  to  fresh  sources  of  misery. 
Never  yet  had  she  had  such  grave  and  deep 
causes  of  individual  mental  torment  to  blacken 
her  views  of  existence,  and  incline  her  to  abhor 
it  as  a  curse.  "Your  instinct  will  save  you, 
bring  you  back  to  your  children,"  wrote  a  friend 
who  knew  her  well.  But  her  maternal  love 
and  solicitude  themselves  were  becoming  a 
source  of  added  distress  and  apprehension. 

The  extraordinary  arrangement  she  and  M. 
Dudevant  had  entered  into  four  years  before 
with  regard  to  each  other,  was  clearly  one 
impossible  to  last.  It  will  be  recollected  that 
she  at  that  time  had  relinquished  her  patrimony 
to  those  who  had  thought  it  no  dishonor  to  con- 
tinue to  enjoy  it ;  and  the  terms  of  that  agree- 
ment had  since  been  nominally  undisturbed. 
But  besides  that,  the  control  of  the  children 


MENTAL    DEVELOPMENT.  IO/ 

remained  a  constant  subject  of  dissension.  M. 
Dudevant  was  beginning  to  get  into  pecuniary 
difficulties  in  the.  management  of  his  wife's 
estate.  Sometimes  he  contemplated  resigning 
it  to  her,  and  retiring  to  Gascony,  to  live  with 
his  widowed  stepmother  on  the  property  which 
at  her  death  would  revert  to  him.  But  unfor- 
tunately he  could  not  make  up  his  mind  to  this 
course.  No  sooner  had  he  drawn  up  an  agree- 
ment consenting  to  a  division  of  property,  than 
he  seemed  to  regret  the  sacrifice  ;  upon  which 
she  ceased  to  press  it. 

Meantime  Madame  Dudevant,  whose  position 
at  Nohant  was  that  of  a  visitor  merely,  and 
becoming  untenable,  felt  her  hold  on  her  cher- 
ished home  and  her  children  becoming  more 
precarious  day  by  day. 

Some  of  her  friends  had  strongly  advised  her 
to  travel  for  a  length  of  time,  both  as  offering 
a  mortal  remedy,  and  as  a  temporary  escape  from 
the  practical  perplexities  of  the  moment.  Her 
rescue,  however,  was  to  be  otherwise  effected, 
and  a  number  of  new  intellectual  interests  that 
sprang  up  for  her  at  this  time  all  tended  to 
retain  her  in  her  own  country. 

It  was  in  the  course  of  this  spring  that  she 
made  the  acquaintance  of  M.  de  Lamennais, 
introduced  to  her  by  their  common  friend,  the 
composer,  Franz  Liszt.  The  famous  author  of 


108  GEORGE    SAND. 

the  Paroles  d'un  Croyant  had  virtually  severed 
himself  from  the  Church  of  Rome  by  his  recent 
publication  of  this  little  volume,  pronounced  by 
the  Pope,  "  small  in  size,  immense  in  perver- 
sity ! "  The  eloquence  of  the  poet -priest,  and 
the  doctrines  of  the  anti-Catholic  and  human- 
itarian Christianity  of  which  he  came  forward 
as  the  expounder,  could  not  fail  powerfully  to 
impress  her  intelligence.  Here  seemed  the 
harbor  of  refuge  her  half-wrecked  faiths  were 
seeking,  and  what  the  abbess  antagonists  de- 
nounced as  the  "  diabolical  gospel  of  social 
science,"  came  to  her  as  the  teachings  of  an 
angel  of  light.  Christianity  as  preached  by  him 
was  a  sort  of  realization  of  the  ideal  religion  of 
Aurore  Dupin — faith  divorced  from  supersti- 
tion and  the  doctrine  of  Romish  infallibility. 
Complete  identity  of  sentiments  between  her- 
self and  the  abbe  was  out  of  the  question.  But 
his  was  the  right  mind  coming  to  her  mind  at  the 
right  moment,  and  exercised  a  healing  influence 
over  her  troubled  spirits.  For  Le  Monde,  a 
journal  founded  by  him  shortly  after  this  time, 
she  wrote  the  Lettres  a  Marcie,  an  unfinished 
series,  treating  of  moral  and  spiritual  problems 
and  trials.  Finally,  the  position  M.  de  Lamen- 
nais  had  taken  up  as  the  apostle  of  the  people 
further  enlisted  her  sympathies  in  his  cause, 
which  made  religious  one  with  social  reform, 


MENTAL   DEVELOPMENT.  109 

and  amalgamated  the  protest  against  moral 
enslavement  with  the  liberation-schemes  then 
fermenting  in  young  and  generous  minds  all 
over  Europe. 

The  belief  in  the  possibility  of  their  speedy 
realization  was  then  wide-spread — a  conviction 
that,  as  Heine  puts  it,  some  grand  recipe  for 
freedom  and  equality,  invented,  well  drawn  up, 
and  inserted  in  the  Moniteur,  was  all  that  was 
needed  to  secure  those  benefits  for  the  world  at 
large.  If  George  Sand,  led  afterwards  into 
searching  for  this  empirical  remedy  for  the 
wrongs  and  sufferings  of  the  masses,  believed 
the  elixir  to  have  been  found  in  the  establish- 
ment of  popular  sovereignty  by  universal  suf- 
frage, it  was  through  the  persuasive  arguments 
of  the  leaders  of  the  movement,  with  whom  at 
this  period  she  was  first  brought  into  personal 
relations.  Her  own  unbiassed  judgment,  to 
which  she  reverted  long  years  after,  when  she 
had  seen  these  illusions  perish  sadly,  was  less 
sanguine  in  its  prognostications  for  the  imme- 
diate future,  as  appears  in  her  own  reflections 
in  a  letter  of  this  time  : —  ' 

What  I  see  in  the  midst  of  the  divergencies  of  all  these 
reforming  sects  is  a  waste  of  generous  sentiments  and  of 
noble  thoughts,  a  tendency  towards  social  amelioration, 
but  an  impossibility  for  the  time  to  bring  forth  through 
the  want  of  a  head  to  that  great  body  with  a  hundred 


110  GEORGE    SAND. 

hands,  that  tears  itself  to  pieces,  for  not  knowing  what  to 
attack.  So  far  the  struggles  make  only  dust  and  noise. 
We  have  not  yet  come  to  the  era  that  will  construct  new 
societies,  and  people  them  with  perfected  men.  • 

She  had  recently  been  introduced  to  a  politi- 
cal and  legal  celebrity  of  his  day,  the  famous 
advocate  Michel,  of  Bourges.  He  was  then  at 
the  height  of  his  reputation,  which,  won  by  his 
eloquent  and  successful  defense  of  political  pris- 
oners on  various  occasions,  was  considerable. 

Madame  Sand  had  been  advised  to  consult  him 

/ 

professionally  about  her  business  affairs,  and  for 
this  purpose  went  over  one  day  with  some  of 
her  Berrichon  friends  to  see  him  at  Bourges. 
But  the  man  of  law  had,  it  appears,  been  read- 
ing Lttia,  and  instead  of  talking  of  business 
with  his  distinguished  client,  dashed  at  once  into 
politics,  philosophy,  and  social  science,  over- 
powering his  listeners  with  the  strength  of  his 
oratory.  His  sentiments  were  those  of  extreme 
radicalism,  and  he  carried  on  a  little  private  pro- 
paganda in  the  country  around.  The  force  of  his 
character  seems  to  have  spent  itself  in  oratori- 
cal effort.  He  could  preach  revolution,  but  not 
suggest  reform  ;  denounce  existing  abuses,  but 
do  nothing  towards  the  remodelling  of  social 
institutions ;  and  in  after  years  he  failed,  as  so 
many  leading  men  in  his  profession  have  failed, 
to  make  any  impression  as  a  speaker  in  Parlia- 


MENTAL    DEVELOPMENT.  Ill 

ment.  The  author  of  Ltttia  was  overwhelmed, 
if  not  all  at  once  converted,  by  the  tremendous 
rhetorical  power  of  this  singular  man.  She  was 
a  proselyte  worth  the  trouble  of  making,  and 
Michel  was  bent  on  drawing  her  more  closely 
into  active  politics,  with  which  hitherto  she  had 
occupied  herself  very  little.  He  began  a  corre- 
spondence, writing  her  long  epistles,  the  sum  of 
which,  she  says,  may  thus  be  resumed  :  —  "  Your 
scepticism  springs  from  personal  unhappiness. 
Love  is  selfish.  Extend  this  solicitude  for  a 
single  individual  to  the  whole  human  race." 
He  certainly  succeeded  in  inspiring  her  with  a 
strong  desire  to  share  his  passion  for  politics, 
his  faith,  his  revivifying  hopes  of  a  speedy  social 
renovation,  his  ambition  to  be  one  of  its  apostles. 
To  Michel,  under  the  sobriquet  of  "  Everard," 
are  addressed  several  of  the  Lettres  (fun  Voy- 
ageuroi  the  spring  and  summer  of  1835,  letters 
which  she  defines  as  "a  rapid  analysis  of  a 
rapid  conversion." 

But  Michel's  work  was  a  work  of  demolition 
only  ;  and  when  his  earnest  disciple  wanted  new 
theories  in  place  of  the  old  forms  so  ruthlessly 
destroyed,  he  had  none  to  offer.  There  were 
others,  however,  who  could.  She  was  soon  to 
be  put  into  communication  with  a  number  of 
the  active  workers  for  the  republican  cause 
throughout  the  country.  They  counted  many 


112  GEORGE    SAND. 

of  the  best  hearts  and  not  the  worst  heads  in 
France,  and  were  naturally  eager  to  enlist  her 
energies  on  their  side. 

Foremost,  by  right  of  the  influence  exercised 
over  her  awhile  by  his  writings,  was  the  phi- 
losopher Pierre  Leroux,  with  whom  her  acquaint- 
ance dates  from  this  same  year.  In  spite  of 
the  wide  divergence  between  her  pre-eminently 
artistic  spirit  and  a  mind  of  the  rougher  stamp 
of  this  born  iconoclast,  he  was  to  indoctrinate 
her  with  many  new  opinions.  His  disinterested 
character  won  her  admiration  ;  he  was  a  prac- 
tical philanthropist  as  well  as  a  critical  thinker, 
one  whose  life  and  fighting  power  were  devoted 
to  promoting  the  good  of  the  working  classes 
to  whom  he  belonged,  having  been  brought  up 
as  a  printer.  He  was  regarded  as  the  apostle 
of  communism,  as  then  understood,  or  rather 
not  understood — for  the  form  under  which  it 
suggested  itself  to  the  social  reformers  of  the 
period  in  question  was  entirely  indefinite. 

Meantime  the  novelist's  pen  was  far  from  idle. 
One  or  two  pleasant  glimpses  she  has  given  us 
into  her  manner  of  working  belong  to  this 
year.  In  the  summer  the  heat  in  her  "poet's 
garret "  becoming  intolerable,  she  took  refuge 
in  a  congenial  solitude  offered  by  the  ground- 
floor  apartments  of  the  house,  then  in  course  of 
reconstruction,  dismantled  and  untenanted.  The 


MENTAL    DEVELOPMENT.  113 

works  had  been  temporarily  suspended,  and 
Madame  Sand  took  possession  of  the  field  aban- 
doned by  the  builders  and  carpenters.  The 
windows  and  doors  opening  into  the  garden  had 
been  taken  away,  and  the  place  thus  turned 
into  an  airy,  cool  retreat.  Out  of  the  apparatus 
of  the  workmen,  left  behind,  she  constructed 
her  writing-establishment,  and  here,  secure 
from  interruption,  denying  herself  to  all  visitors, 
never  going  out  except  to  visit  her  children  at 
their  respective  schools,  she  completed  her 
novel  with  no  companions  but  the  spiders 
crawling  over  the  planks,  the  mice  running  in 
and  out  of  the  corners,  and  the  blackbirds 
hopping  in  from  the  garden  ;  the  deep  sense  of 
solitude  enhanced  by  the  roar  of  the  city  in  the 
very  heart  of  which  she  had  thus  voluntarily 
isolated  herself. 

As  an  artistic  experience  she  found  it  re- 
freshing, and  repeated  it  more  than  once. 
Soon  after,  a  friend  offered  her  the  loan  of  an 
empty  house  at  Bourges,  a  town  that  had  been 
suggested  to  her  as  a  desirable  place  of  resi- 
dence, should  the  circumstances  at  Nohant  ever 
force  her  to  abandon  it  entirely.  As  a  home 
she  saw  and  disapproved  of  Bourges,  but  she 
thoroughly  enjoyed  a  brief  retreat  spent  there 
in  an  absolutely  deserted,  vine-covered  dwelling, 
standing  in  a  garden  enclosed  by  stone  walls. 


114  GEORGE    SAND. 

Her  meals  were  handed  in  through  a  wicket. 
A  few  friends  came  to  see  her  in  the  evenings. 
The  days,  and  often  the  nights,  she  passed  in 
study  and  meditation,  shut  up  in  the  library 
reading  Lavater,  expatiating  on  her  impressions 
of  his  theories  in  a  letter  addressed  to  Franz 
Liszt  (inserted  among  the  Lettres  (Tun  Voya- 
gettr),  or  strolling  in  the  flower  garden  —  "  for- 
gotten," she  tells  us,  "  by  the  whole  world,  and 
plunged  into  oblivion  of  the  actualities  of  my 
own  existence." 

Of  her  numerous  letters  of  advice  to  her  boy 
at  school,  we  quote  one  written  during  this 
summer  of  1835,  when  their  future  relations  to 
each  other  were  in  painful  uncertainty  :  — 

Work,  be  strong  and  proud  ;  despise  the  little  troubles 
supposed  to  belong  to  your  age.  Reserve  your  strength 
of  resistance  for  deeds  and  facts  that  are  worth  the  effort. 
If  I  am  here  no  longer,  think  of  me  who  worked  and 
suffered  cheerfully.  We  are  like  each  other  in  mind  and 
in  countenance.  I  know  already  from  this  day  what  your 
intellectual  life  will  be.  I  fear  for  you  many  and  deep 
sorrows.  I  hope  for  you  the  purest  of  joys.  Guard 
within  yourself  that  treasure,  kindness.  Know  how  to 
give  without  hesitation,  how  to  lose  without  regret,  how 
to  acquire  without  meanness.  Know  how  to  replace  in 
your  heart,  by  the  happiness  of  those  you  love,  the  happi- 
ness that  may  be  wanting  to  yourself.  Keep  the  hope  of 
another  life.  It  is  there  that  mothers  meet  their  sons 
again.  Love  all  God's  creatures.  Forgive  those  who 
are  ill-conditioned,  resist  those  who  are  unjust,  and  de- 


MENTAL    DEVELOPMENT.  11$ 

vote  yourself  to  those  \vho  are  great  through  their  virtue. 
Love  me.  I  will  teach  you  many,  many  things  if  we  live 
together.  If  that  blessing  (the  greatest  that  can  befall 
me,  the  only  one  that  makes  me  wish  for  a  long  life)  is 
not  to  be,  you  must  pray  for  me,  and  from  the  grave 
itself,  if  anything  remains  of  me  in  the  universe,  the  spirit 
of  your  mother  will  watch  over  you. 

In  the  autumn,  1835,  Madame  Dudevant, 
under  legal  advice,  and  supported  by  the 
approval  of  friends  of  both  parties,  determined 
to  apply  to  the  courts  for  a  judicial  separation 
from  her  husband,  on  the  plea  of  ill-treatment. 
She  had  sufficient  grounds  to  allege  for  her 
claim,  and  had  then  every  reason  to  hope  that 
her  demand  would  not  even*  be  contested  by 
M.  Dudevant,  who,  on  former  occasions,  had 
voluntarily  signed  but  afterwards  revoked  the 
agreement  she  hereby  only  desired  to  make 
valid  and  permanent,  and  which,  ensuring  to 
him  a  certain  proportion  of  her  income,  gave 
her  Nohant  for  a  place  of  habitation,  and 
established  the  children  under  her  care. 

Pending  the  issue  of  this  suit,  which,  unex- 
pectedly protracted,  dragged  on  until  the  sum- 
mer of  the  next  year,  she  availed  herself  of  the 
hospitality  of  a  family  at  La  Chatre,  friends  of 
old  standing,  and  from  under  whose  roof  she 
awaited,  as  from  a  neutral  ground,  the  decision 
of  her  judges.  During  this  year  she  saw  little 


Il6  GEORGE  SAND. 

of  Paris,  and  less  of  Nohant,  except  for  a  brief 
visit  which,  profiting  by  a  moment  when  its 
walls  were  absolutely  deserted  by  every  other 
human  being,  she  paid  to  her  house  —  not 
knowing  then  whether  she  would  ever,  so  to 
speak,  inhabit  it  again  in  her  own  right. 

On  the  result  of  the  legal  proceedings 
depended  her  future  home  and  the  best  part 
of  her  happiness.  Sooner  than  be  parted  from 
her  children,  she  contemplated  the  idea,  in  case 
of  the  decision  going  against  her,  of  escaping 
with  them  to  America !  Yet,  in  the  midst  of 
all  this  suspense,  we  find  her  industrious  as 
ever,  joining  in  the  day-time  in  the  family  life 
of  the  household  Vith  which  she  was  domesti- 
cated, helping  to  amuse  the  children  among 
them,  retiring  to  her  room  at  ten  at  night,  to 
work  on  at  her  desk  till  seven  in  the  morning, 
according  to  her  wont.  A  more  cheerful  tone 
begins  to  pervade  her  effusions.  The  clouds 
were  slowly  breaking  on  all  sides  at  once,  and 
a  variety  of  circumstances  combining  to  restore 
to  her  mind  its  natural  tone  —  faith,  hope,  and 
charity  to  her  heart,  and  harmony  to  her  exis- 
tence. She  began  to  perceive  what  she  was 
enabled  afterwards  more  fully  to  acknowledge 
as  follows  :  — 

As  to  my  religion,  the  ground  of  it  has  never  varied. 
The  forms  of  the  past  have  vanished,  for  me  as  for  my 


MENTAL    DEVELOPMENT.  II 7 

century,  before  the  light  of  study  and  rejection.  But 
the  eternal  doctrine  of  believers,  of  God  and  His  good- 
ness, the  immortal  soul  and  the  hopes  of  another  life, 
this  is  what,  in  myself,  has  been  proof  against  all  exami- 
nation, all  discussion,  and  even  intervals  of  despairing 
doubt. 

It  is  significant  that  during  these  months, 
spent  for  the  most  part  at  La  Chatre,  we  find 
her  rewriting  Lelia,  trying,  as  she  expressed 
her  intention,  "  to  transform  this  work  of  anger 
into  a  work  of  gentleness."  Engelwald,  a  novel 
of  some  length  on  which  she  was  engaged,  was 
destined  never  to  see  the  light. 

To  the  Comtesse  d'Agoult,  better  known  by 
her  noin  de  phnne  of  Daniel  Stern,  whose 
acquaintance  she  had  recently  made  in  Paris, 
she  writes  in  May,  1836  :  — 

I  am  still  at  La  Chatre,  staying  with  my  friends,  who 
spoil  me  like  a  child  of  five  years  old.  I  inhabit  a 
suburb,  built  in  terraces  against  the  rock.  At  my  feet 
lies  a  wonderfully  pretty  valley.  A  garden  thirty  feet 
square  and  full  of  roses,  and  a  terrace  extensive  enough 
for  you  to  walk  along  it  in  ten  steps,  are  my  drawing- 
room,  my  study,  and  gallery.  My  bed-room  is  rather 
large  —  it  is  decorated  with  a  red  "cotton  curtained  bed  — 
a  real  peasant's  bed,  hard  and  flat,  two  straw  chairs,  and 
a  white  wooden  table.  My  window  is  situated  six  feet 
above  the  terrace.  By  the  trellised  trees  on  the  wall  I 
can  get  out  and  in,  and  stroll  at  night  among  my  thirty  feet 
of  flowers  without  having  to  open  a  door  or  wake  anyone. 

Sometimes  I  go  out  riding  alone,  at  dusk.     I  come  in 


Il8      .  GEORGE    SAND. 

towards  midnight.  My  cloak,  my  rough  hat,  and  the 
melancholy  trot  of  my  nag,  make  me  pass  in  the  dark- 
ness for  a  commercial  traveller,  or  a  farm-boy. 

One  of  my  grand  amusements  is  to  watch  the  transition 
from  night  to  day;  it  effects  itself  in  a  thousand  different 
manners.  This  revolution,  apparently  so  uniform,  has 
every  day  a  character  of  its  own. 

The  summer  that  had  set  in  was  unusually 
hot  and  sultry.  Writing  to  Madame  d'Agoult, 
July  10,  1836,  she  thus  describes  her  enjoyment 
of  a  season  that  allowed  of  some  of  the  pleasures 
of  primitive  existence  : — 

I  start  on  foot  at  three  in  the  morning,  fully  intending 
to  be  back  by  eight  o'clock  ;  but  I  lose  myself  in  the 
lanes;  I  forget  myself  on  the  banks  of  the  river;  I  run 
after  butterflies;  and  I  get  home  at  midday  in  a  state  of 
torrefaction  impossible  to  describe. 

Another  time  the  sight  of  the  cooling  stream 
is  more  than  she  can  resist,  and  she  walks  into 
the  Indre  fully  dressed  ;  but  a  few  minutes  more 
and  the  sun  has  dried  her  garments,  and  she 
proceeds  on  her  walk  of  ten  or  twelve  miles  — 
"  Never  a  cockchafer  passes  but  I  run  after  it." 

You  have  no  idea  of  all  the  dreams  I  dream  during  my 
walks  in  the  sun.  I  fancy  myself  in  the  golden  days  of 
Greece.  In  this  happy  country  where  I  live  you  may 
often  go  for  six  miles  without  meeting  a  human  creature. 
The  flocks  are  left  by  themselves  in  pastures  well  enclosed 
by  fine  hedges ;  so  the  illusion  can  last  for  some  time. 


MENTAL    DEVELOPMENT.  1 19 

One  of  my  chief  amusements  when  I  have  got  out  to 
some  distance,  where  I  don't  know  the  paths,  is  to  fancy 
I  am  wandering  over  some  other  country  with  which  I 
discover  some  resemblance.  I  recollect  having  strolled 
in  the  Alps,  and  fancied  myself  for  hours  in  America. 
Now  I  picture  to  myself  an  Arcadia  in  Berry.  Not  a 
meadow,  not  a  cluster  of  trees  which,  under  so  fine  a 
sun,  does  not  appear  to  me  quite  Arcadian. 

We  give  these  passages  because  they  seem  to 
us  very  forcibly  to  portray  one  side,  and  that 
the  strongest  and  most  permanent,  of  the  char- 
acter of  George  Sand :  the  admixture  of  a 
child's  simplicity  of  tastes,  a  poet's  fondness  for 
reverie,  and  that  instinctive  independence  of 
habits — an  instinct  stronger  than  the  restraints 
of  custom  —  which  her  individuality  seemed  to 
demand. 

In  the  letter  last  quoted  to  Madame  d'Agoult, 
the  new  ideal  which  was  arising  out  of  these 
contemplations  is  thus  resumed  :  — 

To  throw  yourself  into  the  lap  of  mother  nature :  to 
take  her  really  for  mother  and  sister;  stoically  and  relig- 
iously to  cut  off  from  your  life  what  is  mere  gratified 
vanity;  obstinately  to  resist  the  proud  and  the  wicked;  to 
make  yourself  humble  with  the  unfortunate,  to  weep  with 
the  misery  of  the  poor;  nor  desire  another  consolation 
than  the  putting  down  of  the  rich ;  to  acknowledge  no 
other  God  than  Him  who  ordains  justice  and  equality 
upon  men ;  to  venerate  what  is  good,  to  judge  severely 
what  is  only  strong,  to  live  on  very  little,  to  give  away 
nearly  all,  in  order  to  re-establish  primitive  equality  and 


120  GEORGE  SAND. 

bring  back  to  life  again  the  Divine  institution :  that  is 
the  religion  I  shall  proclaim  in  a  little  corner  of  my  own, 
and  that  I  aspire  to  preach  to  my  twelve  apostles  under 
the  lime-trees  in  my  garden. 

The  judgment  of  the  court,  first  pronounced 
in  February,  1836,  and  given  in  her  favor  by 
default,  no  opposition  having  been  raised  to  her 
claims  to  the  proposed  partition  of  property  by 
the  defendant,  placed  her  in  legal  possession  of 
her  house  and  her  children.  Appeal  was  made, 
however,  prolonging  and  complicating  the  case, 
but  without  affecting  its  termination.  In  the 
war  of  mutual  accusations  thus  stirred  up,  M. 
Dudevant's  role  as  accuser,  yet  objecting  in  the 
same  breath  to  the  separation,  had  an  appear- 
ance of  insincerity  that  could  not  fail  to  with- 
draw sympathy  from  his  side,  irrespective  of  any 
judgment  that  might  be  held  on  the  conduct  of 
the  wife,  whose  absence  and  complete  independ- 
ence he  had  authorized  or  acquiesced  in.  Before 
the  actual  conclusion  of  the  law-suit  his  appeal 
was  withdrawn.  As  a  result,  the  previous  judg- 
ment in  favor  of  Madame  Dudevant  was  virtu- 
ally confirmed,  and  the  details  were  settled  by 
private  agreement. 

It  is  almost  impossible  to  overrate  the  impor- 
tance to  George  Sand  of  a  conclusion  that  gave 
her  back  her  old  home  of  Nohant,  and  secured 
to  her  the  permanent  companionship  of  her 


MEXTAL    DEVELOPMENT.  121 

children.  The  present  pecuniary  arrangement 
left  M.  Dudevant  some  hold  over  Maurice  and 
his  education,  concerning  which  his  parents  had 
long  disagreed,  and  which  for  another  year 
remained  a  source  of  contention. 

The  affair  thus  concluded,  Madame  Sand 
entered  formally  into  possession  of  Nohant ; 
and  early  in  September  she  started  with  her  two 
children  for  Switzerland,  where  they  spent  the 
autumn  holidays  in  a  long-contemplated  visit  to 
herfriend  the  Comtesse  d'Agoult,  then  at  Geneva, 
This  tour  is  fancifully  sketched  in  a  closing 
number  of  the  Lettres  (Tun  Voyageur,  a  volume 
which  stands  as  a  sort  of  literary  memorial  of 
two  years  of  unsettled,  precarious  existence, 
material  and  spiritual — a  time  of  trial  now 
happily  at  an  end. 

Simon,  a  tale  dedicated  to  Madame  d'Agoult, 
and  published  in  the  Revue  des  Deux  Mondes, 
1836  —  a  graceful  story,  of  no  high  pretentions 
—  is  noticeable  as  marking  the  commencement 
of  a  decided  and  agreeable  change  in  the  tone  of 
George  Sand's  fiction.  Hitherto  the  predomi- 
nant note  struck  had  been  most  often  one  of 
melancholy,  if  not  despair  —  the  more  hopelessly 
painful  the  subject,  the  more  fervent,  apparently, 
the  inspiration  to  the  writer.  In  Indiana  she 
had  portrayed  the  double  victim  of  tyranny  and 
treachery  ;  in  Valentine,  a  helpless  girl  sacrificed 


122  GEORGE    SAND. 

to  family  ambition  and  social  prejudice;  in 
L/lia  and  Jacques,  the  incurable  Weltschmerz, 
heroism  unvalued  and  wasted  ;  in  Leone  Leoni, 
the  infatuation  of  a  weak-minded  woman  for  a 
phenomenal  scoundrel ;  in  Andre",  the  wretched- 
ness which  a  timid,  selfish  character,  however 
amiable,  may  bring  down  on  itself  and  on  all 
connected  with  it.  Henceforward  she  prefers 
themes  of  a  pleasanter  nature.  In  Simon  she 
paints  the  triumph  of  true  and  patient  love  over 
social  prejudice  and  strong  opposition.  In 
Matiprat*  written  in  1837,  at  Nohant,  she  exerts 
all  the  force  of  her  imagination  and  language  to 
bring  before  us  vividly  the  gradual  redemption 
of  a  noble  but  degraded  nature,  through  the 
influence  of  an  exclusive,  passionate  and  inde- 
structible affection.  The  natural  optimism  of 
her  temperament,  not  her  incidental  misfortunes, 
began  and  continued  to  color  her  compositions. 
From  Switzerland  she  returned  for  part  of 
the  winter  to  Paris.  She  had  given  up  her 
"poet's  garret,"  and  occupied  for  a  while  a 
suite  of  rooms  in  the  Hotel  de  France,  where 
resided  also  Madame  d'Agoult.  The  salon  of 
the  latter  wac  a  favorite  rendezvous  of  cosmo- 
politan artistic  celebrities,  whose  general  ren- 
dezvous just  then  was  Paris.  A  very  Pantheon 

*  Mauprat,  translated  by  Miss  Vaughan.     Boston,  Roberts 
Brothers. 


MENTAL    DEVELOPMENT.  123 

must  have  been  an  intimate  circle  that  included, 
among  others,  George  Sand,  Daniel  Stern, 
Heine,  the  Polish  poet  Mickiewicz,  Eugene 
Delacroix,  Meyerbeer,  Listz,  Hiller,  and 
Frederic  Chopin. 

The  delicate  health  of  her  son  forced  Madame 
Sand  to  leave  with  him  shortly  for  Berry,  where 
he  soon  became  convalescent.  Later  in  the 
season,  some  of  the  same  party  of  friends  that 
had  met  in  Paris  met  again  at  Nohant.  It  was 
during  this  summer  that  George  Sand  wrote 
for  her  child  the  well-known  little  tale,  Les 
Mattres  Mosatstes,  in  which  the  adventures  of 
the  Venetian  mosaic-workers  are  woven  into  so 
charming  a  picture.  "  I  do  not  know  why,  but 
it  is  seldom  that  I  have  written  anything  with 
so  much  pleasure,"  she  tells  us.  "  It  was  in 
the  country,  in  summer  weather,  as  hot  as  the 
Italian  climate  I  had  lately  left.  I  have  never 
seen  so  many  birds  and  flowers  in  my  garden. 
Liszt  was  playing  the  piano  on  the  ground 
floor,  and  the  nightingales,  intoxicated  with 
music  and  sunshine,  were  singing  madly  in  the 
lilac -trees  around." 

The  party  was  abruptly  dispersed  upon  the 
intelligence  that  reached  Madame  Sand  of  her 
mother's  sudden,  and,  as  it  proved,  fatal  illness. 
She  hurried  to  Paris,  and  remained  with 
Madame  Maurice  Dupin  during  her  last  days. 


124  GEORGE    SAND. 

The  old  fond  affection  between  them,  though 
fitful  in  its  manifestations  on  the  part  of  the 
mother,  had  never  been  impaired,  and  the 
breaking  of  this  old  link  with  the  past  was 
very  deeply  felt  by  Madame  Sand. 

Before  returning  to  Nohant,  she  spent  a  few 
weeks  at  Fontainebleau  with  her  son,  from 
whom  she  never  liked  to  separate.  They 
passed  their  days  in  exploring  the  forest,  then 
larger  and  wilder  than  now,  botanizing  and 
butterfly-hunting.  At  night  she  sat  up  writing, 
when  all  was  quiet  in  the  inn.  Just  as,  whilst 
at  Venice,  her  fancy  flew  back  to  the  scenes 
and  characters  of  French  provincial  life,  and 
Andrt  was  the  result,  so  here,  amid  the  forest 
landscapes  of  her  own  land,  her  imagination 
rushed  off  to  Venice  and  the  shores  of  the 
Brenta,  and  produced  La  Dernih'e  Aldini. 

This  constant  industry,  which  had  now  be- 
come her  habit  of  life,  was  more  of  a  practical 
necessity  than  ever.  Nohant,  as  already  men- 
tioned, barely  repaid  the  owner  the  expenses  of 
keeping  it  up.  Madame  Sand,  who  desired  to 
be  liberal  besides,  to  travel  occasionally,  to 
gratify  little  artistic  fancies  as  they  arose,  must 
look  to  her  literary  work  to  furnish  the  means. 

"  Sometimes,"  she  writes  from  Nohant,  in 
October,  1837,  to  Madame  d'Agoult,  then  in 
Italy,  "  I  am  tempted  to  realize  my  capital, 


MENTAL    DEVELOPMENT.  125 

and  come  and  join  you  ;  but  out  there  I  should 
do  no  work,  and  the  galley-slave  is  chained  up. 
If  Buloz  lets  him  go  for  a  walk  it  is  on  parole, 
and  parole  is  the  cannon-ball  the  convict  drags 
on  his  foot." 

Nor  was  it  for  herself  only  that  she  worked 
in  future,  but  for  her  children,  the  whole  re- 
sponsibility of  providing  for  both  of  whose 
education  she  was  now  about  definitely  to  take 
on  her  own  shoulders.  The  power  of  inter- 
ference left  to  M.  Dudevant  by  the  recent  legal 
decision  had  been  exercised  in  a  manner  leading 
to  fresh  vexatious  contention,  and  continual 
alarm  on  Madame  Sand's  part  lest  the  boy 
should  be  taken  by  force  from  her  side.  These 
skirmishes  included  the  actual  abduction  of 
Solange  from  Nohant  by  M.  Dudevant  during 
her  mother's  absence  at  Fontainebleau  ;  a  foolish 
and  purposeless  trick,  by  which  nothing  was  to 
be  gained,  except^lnoyance  and  trouble  to 
Madame  Sand,  whose  right  to  the  control  of  her 
daughter  had  never  been  contested.  A  final 
settlement  entered  into  between  the  parties, 
in  1838,  placed  these  matters  henceforward  on 
a  footing  of  peace,  fortunately  permanent.  By 
this  agreement  Madame  Sand  received  back 
from  M.  Dudevant  —  who  had  lately  succeeded 
to  his  father's  estate  —  some  house  property 
that  formed  part  of  her  patrimony,  and  paid 


126  GEORGE    SAND. 

down  to  him  the  sum  of  £2,000  ;  he  ceding  to 
her  the  remnant  of  his  paternal  rights ;  she 
freeing  him  from  all  charges  for  Maurice's 
education,  her  authority  over  which,  in  future, 
was  recognized  as  complete. 


CHAPTER  VI. 

SOLITUDE,  SOCIETY    AND    SOCIALISM. 

THE  charge  of  both  children  now  resting 
entirely  in  her  hands,  Madame  Sand  was 
enabled  to  fulfill  her  desire  of  permanently  re- 
moving her  boy,  now  fourteen  years  of  age, 
from  the  college  Henri  IV.  Not  only  was  she 
opposed  to  the  general  regime  and  educational 
system  pursued  in  French  public  schools  of  this 
type,  she  felt  persuaded  of  its  special  unsuit- 
ability  to  her  son,  whose  tastes  and  tempera- 
ment were  artistic,  like  her  own,  and  whose 
classical  studies  had  been  repeatedly  interrupted 
by  illness.  His  delicate  health  determined  her 
to  spend  the  winter  of  1838-9  abroad  with  her 
family.  Having  heard  the  climate  and  scenery 
of  Majorca  highly  praised,  she  selected  the 
island  for  their  resort ;  tempted  herself  by  the 
prospect  of  a  few  months  absolute  quiet,  where, 
with  neither  letters  to  answer,  nor  newspapers 
to  read,  she  would  enjoy  some  rare  leisure, 
which  she  proposed  to  spend  in  studying  history 
and  teaching  French  to  her  children. 


128  GEORGE  SAND. 

Just  at  this  time  her  friend  and  ardent 
admirer,  Frederic  Chopin,  was  recovering  from 
a  chest  attack,  the  first  presage  of  the  illness 
that  caused  his  early  death.  The  eminent 
pianist  and  composer  had  also  been  recom- 
mended to  winter  in  the  South,  and  greatly 
needed  repose  and  change  of  air  to  recruit  him 
from  the  fatigues  of  the  Parisian  season.  It 
was  arranged  that  the  convalescent  should  make 
one  of  the  expedition  to  Majorca.  He  joined 
Madame  Sand  and  her  children  at  Perpignan, 
and  they  embarked  for  Barcelona,  whence  the 
sea-voyage  to  the  island  was  safely  accomplished, 
the  party  reaching  Palma,  the  capital,  in  magni- 
ficent November  weather,  and  never  suspecting 
how  soon  they  would  have  cause  to  repent  their 
choice  of  a  retreat. 

But  their  practical  information  about  the 
island  proved  lamentably  insufficient.  With 
the  scenery,  indeed,  they  were  enraptured. 
"  We  found,"  says  Madame  Sand  in  her  little 
volume,  Un  Hiver  d  Majorque,  published  the 
following  year,  "  a  green  Switzerland  under  a 
Calabrian  sky,  with  all  the  solemnity  and  still- 
ness of  the  East."  But  though  a  painter's 
Elysium,  Majorca  was  wanting  in  the  com- 
monest comforts  of  civilized  life.  Inns  were 
non-existent,  foreigners  viewed  and  treated  with 
suspicion.  The  party  thought  themselves  for- 


SOLITUDE,  SOCIETY,  ETC.  129 

tunate  in  securing  a  villa  some  miles  from  Palma, 
furnished,  though  scantily.  "  The  country, 
nature,  trees,  sky,  sea,  and  mountains  surpass 
all  my  dreams,"  she  writes  in  the  first  days,  "  it 
is  the  promised  land ;  and  as  we  have  succeeded 
in  housing  ourselves  pretty  well,  we  are 
delighted." 

The  delight  was  of  brief  duration.  That 
Madame  Sand's  manuscripts  took  a  month  to 
reach  the  editor  of  the  Revue  des  Deux  Mondes  ; 
that  the  piano  ordered  from  Paris  for  Chopin 
took  two  months  to  get  to  Majorca,  were  the 
least  among  their  troubles.  A  rainy  season  of 
exceptional  severity  set  in,  and  the  villa  quickly 
became  uninhabitable.  It  was  not  weather- 
proof. Chopin  fell  alarmingly  ill.  Good  food 
and  medical  attendance  were  hardly  to  be  pro- 
cured for  him  ;  and  finally,  the  villa  proprietor, 
having  heard  that  his  tenant  was  suffering  from 
consumption  —  an  illness  believed  to  be  infec- 
tious by  the  Majorcans  —  gave  the  whole  party 
notice  to  quit.  The  invalid  improving  some- 
what, though  still  too  weak  to  attempt  the  re- 
turn journey  to  France,  Madame  Sand  trans- 
ported her  ambulance,  as  she  styled  it,  to  some 
tolerable  quarters  she  had  already  discovered 
in  the  deserted  Carthusian  monastery  of  Valde- 
mosa  —  "a  poetical  name  and  a  poetical  abode," 
she  writes  ;  an  admirable  landscape,  grand  and 


130  GEORGE  SAND. 

wild,  with  the  sea  at  both  ends  of  the  horizon, 
formidable  peaks  around  us,  eagles  pursuing 
their  prey  even  down  to  the  orange-trees  in  our 
garden,  a  cypress  walk  winding  from  the  top  of 
our  mountain  to  the  bottom  of  the  gorge,  tor- 
rents overgrown  with  myrtles,  palm-trees  below 
our  feet,  nothing  could  be  more  magnificent 
than  this  spot." 

Parts  of  the  old  monastic  buildings  were  di- 
lapidated ;  the  rest  were  in  good  order,  being 
frequented  as  a  summer  retreat  by  the  inhabit- 
ants of  Palma.  Now,  in  December,  the  Char- 
treuse was  entirely  abandoned,  except  by  a 
housekeeper,  a  sacristan  and  a  lone  monk,  the 
last  offshoot  of  the  community — a  kind  of 
apothecary,  whose  stock-in-trade  was  limited  to 
guimauve-and  dog-grass. 

The  rooms  into  which  the  travellers  moved  had 
just  been  vacated  by  a  Spanish  family  of  political 
refugees  departing  for  France.  These  lodgings 
were  at  least  provided  with  doors,  window-panes, 
and  decent  furniture  ;  but  the  luxury  of  chim- 
neys was  unknown,  and  a  stove,  which  had  to 
be  manufactured  at  an  enormous  price  on  pur- 
pose for  the  party,  is  described  as  "  a  sort  of 
iron  cauldron,  that  made  our  heads  ache  and 
dried  up  our  throats."  Continuous  stormy 
weather  having  suspended  steam  traffic  with 
the  mainland,  the  visitors  had  no  choice  but  to 


SOLITUDE,  SOCIETY,  ETC.  131 

remain  prisoners  some  two  months  more,  during 
which  the  deluge  went  on  with  little  intermis- 
sion. 

Still,  to  young  and  romantic  imaginations 
the  island  and  life  in  the  ex-monastery  offered 
considerable  charm.  Madame  Sand  and  her 
children  were  delighted  with  the  unfamiliar 
vegetation,  the  palms,  aloes,  olives,  almond 
and  orange  trees,  the  Arab  architecture,  and 
picturesque  costumes.  Valdemosa  itself  was 
splendidly  situated  among  the  mountains,  in  a 
stone-walled  garden  surrounded  with  cypress 
trees  and  planted  with  palms  and  olives.  In 
the  morning,  Madame  Sand  gave  lessons  to  the 
children ;  in  the  afternoon,  they  ran  wild  out  of 
doors  whilst  she  wrote  —  when  the  invalid 
musician  was  well  enough  to  be  left.  In  the 
evenings  she  and  the  young  people  went  wan- 
dering by  moonlight  through  the  cloisters, 
exploring  the  monkish  cells  and  chapels.  Mau- 
rice had  fortunately  recovered  his  health  com- 
pletely, but  poor  Chopin's  state,  aggravated  by 
the  damp  weather  and  privations — for  the 
difficulties  in  obtaining  a  regular  supply  of 
provisions  were  immense  —  remained  through- 
out their  stay  a  constant  and  terrible  cause  of 
anxiety  and  responsibility  to  Madame  Sand. 
From  the  islanders  no  sort  of  help  or  even 
sympathy  was  forthcoming,  and  thievish  ser- 


132  GEORGE  SAND. 

vants  and  extortionate  traders  were  not  the 
least  of  the  annoyances  with  which  the  stran- 
gers had  to  contend.  In  a  letter  to  Francois 
Rollinat  she  gives  a  graphic  account  of  their 
misfortunes  :  — 

It  has  rightly  been  laid  down  as  a  principle  that  where 
nature  is  beautiful  and  generous,  men  are  bad  and  avari- 
cious. We  had  all  the  trouble  in  the  world  to  procure 
the  commonest  articles  of  food,  such  as  the  island  pro- 
duces in  abundance ;  thanks  to  the  signal  dishonesty,  the 
plundering  spirit  of  the  peasants,  who  made  us  pay  for 
everything  three  times  what  it  was  worth,  so  that  we 
were  at  their  mercy  under  the  penalty  of  dying  of  hunger. 
We  could  get  no  one  to  serve  us,  because  we  were  not 
Christians  [the  travellers  passed  for  being  "  sold  to  the 
Devil"  because  they  did  not  go  to  Mass],  and,  besides, 
nobody  would  attend  on  a  consumptive  invalid.  How- 
ever, for  better  for  worse,  we  were  established.  .  .  . 
The  place  was  incomparably  poetical;  we  did  not  see  a 
living  soul,  nothing  disturbed  our  work;  after  waiting 
two  months,  and  paying  three  hundred  francs  extra, 
Chopin  had  at  last  received  his  piano,  and  delighted  the 
vaults  of  his  cell  with  his  melodies.  Health  and  strength 
were  visibly  returning  to  Maurice ;  as  for  me,  I  worked 
*  as  tutor  seven  hours  a  day :  I  sat  up  working  on  my  own 
account  half  the  night ;  Chopin  composed  master-pieces, 
and  we  hoped  to  put  up  with  the  remainder  of  our  dis- 
comforts by  the  aid  of  these  compensations. 

It  was  in  the  cells  of  Valdemosa  that  Madame 
Sand  completed  her  novel  of  Monastic  life, 
Spiridion,  then  publishing  in  the  Revue  des 


SOLITUDE,  SOCIETY,  ETC.  133 

Deux  Mondes.  "  For  heaven's  sake  not  so 
much  mysticism ! "  prayed  the  editor  of  her, 
now  and  then  ;  and  assuredly  those  readers  for 
whom  George  Sand  was  simply  a  purveyor  of 
passionate  romances,  those  critics  who  set  her 
down  in  their  minds  as  exclusively  a  glorifier 
of  mutinous  emotion  and  the  apologist  of  law- 
less love,  must  have  been  taken  aback  by  these 
pages,  in  which  she  had  devoted  her  most 
fervent  energies  to  tracing  the  spiritual  his- 
tory, pen  rtcrfatif,  as  she  dryly  observes,  of  a 
monk  who,  in  the  days  of  the  decadence  of  the 
monastic  orders,  retained  earnestness  and  sin- 
cerity ;  whose  mind,  revolted  by  the  hypocrisy 
and  worldliness  around  him,  passes  through  the 
successive  stages  of  heresy  and  philosophic 
doubt,  and  to  whom  is  finally  revealed  an 
eternal  gospel,  which  lies  at  the  core  of  his 
old  religion,  but  which  later  growths  have 
stifled,  and  which  outlasts  all  shocks  and 
changes,  and  is  to  generate  the  religion  of 
the  future. 

The  compositions  of  Chopin  above  alluded  to, 
include  the  finest  of  his  well-known  Preludes, 
which  may  easily  be  conceived  of  as  suggested 
by  the  strange  mingling  of  contrasting  impres- 
sions in  the  Chartreuse.  "  Several  of  these 
Preludes,"  writes  Madame  Sand,  "  represent 
the  visions  that  haunted  him  of  deceased 


134  GEORGE  SAND. 

monks,  the  sounds  of  funeral  chants ;  others 
are  soft  and  melancholy  ;  these  came  to  him  in 
his  hours  of  sunshine  and  health,  at  the  sound 
of  the  children's  laughter  beneath  the  window, 
the  distant  thrum  of  guitars  and  the  songs  of 
the  birds  under  the  damp  foliage  ;  at  the  sight 
of  the  pale  little  roses  in  bloom  among  the 
snow." 

The  loneliness  and  melancholy  beauty  of  the 
spot,  however  congenial  to  the  romance  writer 
or  inspiring  to  the  composer,  were  not  the  right 
tonics  for  the  nerves  of  the  over-sensitive, 
imaginative  invalid.  The  care  and  nursing  of 
Madame  Sand  made  amends  for  much,  and  by 
her  good  sense  she  saved  him  from  being 
doctored  to  death  by  local  practitioners.  But 
his  fortitude,  which  bore  up  heroically  against 
his  personal  danger,  was  not  proof  against  the 
dreary  influences  of  Valdemosa  in  bad  weather, 
the  fogs,  the  sound  of  the  hurricane  sweeping 
through  the  valley,  and  bringing  down  portions 
of  the  dilapidated  building,  the  noise  of  the 
torrents,  the  cries  of  the  scared  sea-birds  and 
the  roar  of  the  sea. 

The  elevation  of  the  Chartreuse  made  the 
climate  peculiarly  disagreeable  at  this  season. 
She  writes  on  : — 

We  lived  in  the  midst  of  clouds,  and  for  fifty  days  were 
unable  to  get  down  into  the  plains;  the  roads  were 
changed  to  torrents,  and  we  saw  nothing  more  of  the  sun. 


SOLITUDE,  SOCIETY,  ETC.  135 

I  should  have  thought  it  all  beautiful  if  poor  Chopin 
could  only  have  got  on.  Maurice  was  none  the  worse. 
The  wind  and  the  sea  sung  sublimely  as  they  beat  against 
the  rocks.  The  vast  and  empty  cloisters  cracked  over 
our  heads.  If  I  had  been  there  when  I  wrote  the  portion 
of  Lelia  that  takes  place  in  the  convent,  I  should  have 
made  it  finer  and  truer.  But  my  poor  friend's  chest  got 
worse  and  worse.  The  fine  weather  did  not  return.  .  . 
A  maid  I  had  brought  over  from  France,  and  who  so  far 
had  resigned  herself,  on  condition  of  enormous  wages,  to 
cook  and  do  the  housework,  began  to  refuse  attendance, 
as  too  hard.  The  moment  was  coming  when  after  hav- 
ing wielded  the  broom  and  managed  the  pot  au  feu,  I  was 
ready  to  drop  with  fatigue — for  besides  my  work  as 
tutor,  besides  my  literary  labor,  besides  the  continual 
attention  necessitated  by  the  condition  of  my  invalid,  I 
had  rheumatism  in  every  limb. 

The  return  of  spring  was  hailed  as  offering  a 
tardy  release  from  their  island.  The  steamers 
were  running  again,  and  the  party  determined 
to  leave  at  all  risks ;  for  though  Chopin's  state 
was  more  precarious  than  ever,  nothing  could 
be  worse  for  him  than  to  remain.  They 
departed,  feeling,  she  admits,  as  though  they 
were  escaping  from  the  tender  mercies  of  Poly- 
nesian savages,  and  once  safely  on  board  a 
French  vessel  at  Barcelona,  they  thankfully 
welcomed  the  day  that  restored  them  to  com- 
fort and  civilization,  and  saw  the  end  of  an 
expedition  that  had  turned  out  in  most  respects 
so  disastrous  a  fiasco. 


136  GEORGE   SAND. 

They  remained  throughout  April  at  Mar- 
seilles, where  Chopin,  in  the  hands  of  a  good 
doctor,  became  convalescent.  From  Marseilles 
they  made  a  short  tour  in  Italy,  visiting  Genoa 
and  the  neighborhood,  and  returning  to  France 
in  May,  Chopin  apparently  on  the  high  road  to 
complete  recovery.  It  was  in  the  following 
year  that  his  illness  returned  in  a  graver  form, 
•and  unmistakable  symptoms  of  consumption 
showed  themselves.  The  life  of  a  fashionable 
pianist  in  Paris,  the  constant  excitement,  late 
hours,  and  heavy  strain  of  nervous  exertion, 
were  fatal  to  his  future  chances  of  preserving 
his  health  ;  but  it  was  a  life  to  which  he  had 
now  become  wedded,  and  which  he  never  will- 
ingly left,  except  for  his  long  annual  visits  to 
Nohant. 

Madame  Sand  repeatedly  contemplated  set- 
tling herself  entirely  in  the  country.  She  had 
no  love  for  Paris.  "Parisian  life  strains  our 
nerves  and  kills  us  in  the  long  run,"  she  writes 
from  Nohant  to  one  of  her  correspondents. 
"Ah,  how  I  hate  it,  that  centre  of  light !  I  would 
never  set  foot  in  it  again,  if  the  people  I  like 
would  make  the  same  resolution."  And  again, 
speaking  of  her  "  Black  Valley,  so  good  and  so 
stupid,"  she  adds,  "Here  I  am  always  more  my- 
self than  at  Paris,  where  I  am  always  ill,  in 
body  and  in  spirit." 


SOLITUDE,  SOCIETY,  ETC.  137 

Paris,  however,  afforded  greater  facilities  for 
her  children's  education.  She  had  a  strong 
desire  to  see  her  son  an  artist,  and  he  was 
already  studying  painting  in  Delacroix's  studio. 
Also  her  income  at  this  moment  did  not  suffice 
to  enable  her  to  live  continuously  at  Nohant 
where,  she  frankly  confessed,  she  had  not  yet 
found  out  how  to  live  economically,  expected  as 
she  was  to  keep  open  house,  regarded  as 
grudging  and  unneighborly  if  she  did  not 
maintain  her  establishment  on  a  scale  to  which 
her  resources  as  yet  were  unequal.  Her 
expenses  in  the  country  she  calculated  as  double 
those  in  Paris,  where,  as  she  writes  to  M. 
Chatiron, — 

Everyone's  independence  is  admirable.  You  invite 
whom  you  like,  and  when  you  don't  wish  to  receive 
anyone  you  let  the  porter  know  you  are  not  at  home. 
Yet  I  hate  Paris  in  all  other  respects.  There  I  grow 
stout,  and  my  mind  grows  thin.  You  know  how  quiet 
and  retired  my  life  there  is,  and  I  do  not  understand  why 
you  tell  me,  as  they  say  in  the  provinces,  that  glory 
keeps  me  there.  I  have  no  glory,  I  have  never  sought 
for  it,  and  I  don't  care  a  cigarette  for  it.  I  want  to 
breath  fresh  air  and  live  in  peace.  I  am  succeeding,  but 
you  see  and  you  know  on  what  conditions. 

Her  Paris  residence,  a  few  seasons  later,  she 
fixed  in  the  Courd' Orleans  Rue  St.  Lazare,  in  a 
block  of  buildings  one-third  of  which  was 


138  GEORGE   SAND, 

occupied  by  herself  and  her  family  ;  another 
belonged  to  her  friend,  Madame  Marliani,  wife 
of  the  Spanish  Consul,  the  third  to  Frederic 
Chopin. 

With  respect  to  Chopin's  long  and  deep 
attachment  to  Madame  Sand,  and  its  requital, 
concerning  which  so  much  has  been  written, 
there  can  surely  be  no  greater  misstatement 
than  to  speak  of  her  as  having  blighted  his  life. 
This  last  part  of  his  life  was  indeed  blighted, 
but  by  ill-health  and  consequent  .nervous 
irritability  and  suffering ;  but  such  mitigation  as 
was  possible  he  found  for  eight  years  in  the 
womanly  devotion  and  genial  society  of 
Madame  Sand — real  benefits  to  one  whose 
strange  and  delicate  individuality  it  was  not 
easy  to  befriend  —  and  which  the  breach  that 
took  place  between  them  shortly  before  his 
death  should  not  allow  us  to  forget. 

"Chopin,"  observes  Eugene  Delacroix,  "be- 
longs to  the  small  number  of  those  whom  one 
can  both  esteem  and  love."  Madame  Sand 
joined  a  sympathetic  appreciation  of  the  refine- 
ment of  his  nature,  and  an  enthusiastic  admira- 
tion of  his  genius — feelings  she  shared  with 
his  numberless  female  worshippers  —  to  a 
strength  of  character  that  lent  the  support  no 
other  could  perhaps  so  fully  have  given,  or  that 
he  would  accept  from  no  other,  to  the  fragile, 


SOLITUDE,  SOCIETY,  ETC.  139 

'nervous,  suffering  tone-poet.  Her  sentiments 
towards  him  seem  to  resolve  themselves  into  a 
great  tenderness  rather  than  a  passionate  fer- 
vor—  a  placid  affection  for  himself,  and  an 
adoration  for  his  music. 

All  the  time  their  existences,  so  far  from 
having  been  united,  flowed  in  different,  nay 
divergent  channels.  Chopin,  the  idol  of  Paris 
society,  moved  constantly  in  the  aristocratic 
and  fashionable  world,  from  which  Madame 
Sand  lived  aloof.  She  for  her  part  had  heavy 
domestic  cares  and  anxieties  that  did  not  touch 
him,  and  with  the  political  party  which  was  ab- 
sorbing more  and  more  of  her  energies  he  had 
no  sympathy  whatever.  Whether  the  cause 
were  the  false  start  she  had  made  at  the  outset 
by  her  marriage,  forbidding  her  the  realization 
of  a  woman's  ideal,  the  non-separation  of  the 
gift  of  her  heart  from  that  of  her  whole  life,  or 
whether  that  her  masculine  strength  of  intellect 
created  for  her  serious  public  interests  and 
occupations,  beside  which  personal  pleasures 
and  pains  are  apt  to  become  of  secondary 
moment,  certain  it  appears  that  with  George 
Sand,  as  with  many  an  eminent  artist  of  the 
opposite  sex,  such  affaires  dc  cceur  were  but 
ripples  on  the  sea  of  a  large  and  active  exist- 
ence. 

The  year  after  her  return  from  Majorca  was 


140  GEORGE   SAND. 

marked  by  her  first  appearance  before  the  public 
as  a  dramatic  author.  Although  it  was  a  line 
in  which  ^he  afterwards  obtained  successes,  as 
will  be  seen  in  a  future  chapter,  the  result  of 
this  initial  effort,  Cosima,  a  five-act  drama,  was 
not  encouraging.  It  was  acted  at  the  Theatre 
Fran9ais  in  the  spring  of  1840,  and  proved  a 
failure.  It  betrays  no  insufficient  sense  of  drama- 
tic effect,  nor  lack  of  the  means  for  producing 
it,  but  decided  clumsiness  in  the  adaptation  of 
these  means  to  that  end.  The  plot  and  person- 
ages recall  those  of  Indiana,  with  the  impor- 
tant differences  that  the  beau  role  of  the  piece 
falls  to  the  husband,  and  that  the  scene  is 
transported  back  to  Florence  in  the  Middle 
Ages  —  an  undoubted  error,  as  giving  to  a 
play  essentially  modern  and  French  in  its  com- 
plexities of  sentiment  and  motive  a  strong  local 
coloring  of  a  past  time  and  another  people, 
making  the  whole  seem  unreal.  It  has  a 
psychological  subject  which  Emile  Augier  or 
Dumas  fils  would  know  how  to  handle  drama- 
tically ;  but  as  treated  by  George  Sand,  we  are 
perpetually  being  led  to  anticipate  too  much  in 
the  way  of  action,  to  have  our  expectations 
dissipated  the  next  moment.  A  wet  blanket  of 
disappointment  on  this  head  dampens  any  other 
satisfaction  that  the  merits  of  the  play  might 
otherwise  afford. 


SOLITUDE,  SOCIETY,  ETC.  141 

Hitherto  she  had  continued  to  write  regularly 
for  the  Revue  dcs  Deux  Mondcs.  As  her  revo- 
lutionary opinions  became  more  pronounced, 
they  began  to  find  utterance  in  her  romances. 
Her  conversion  by  Michel  had  not  only  been 
complete,  but  the  disciple  had  outstripped  the 
master.  The  study  of  the  communistic  theories 
of  Pierre  Leroux  had  familiarized  her  with  the 
speculations  in  social  science  of  those  who  at 
this  time  were  devoting  their  attention  to  criti- 
cising the  existing  social  organization,  and 
seeking,  and  sometimes  imagining  they  had 
found,  the  secret  of  creating  a  better.  George 
Sand's  strong  admiration  for  the  writings  of 
Leroux,  always  praised  by  her  in  the  highest 
terms,  strikes  us  now  as  extravagant,  but  was 
shared  to  some  extent  by  not  a  few  leading  men 
of  the  time,  such  as  Sainte-Beuve  and  Lamartine. 
Her  intellect  had  eagerly  followed  this  bold  and 
earnest  pioneer  in  new-discovered  worlds  of 
thought ;  "I  do  not  say  it  is  the  last  word  of 
humanity,  but,  so  far,  it  is  its  most  advanced 
expression,"  she  states  of  his  philosophy.  The 
study  of  it  had  brought  a  clearness  into  her  own 
views,  due,  probably,  much  more  to  the  action 
of  her  own  mind  upon  the  novel  ideas  suggested 
than  to  the  lucidity  of  a  system  of  social  science 
as  yet  undetermined  in  some  of  its  main  points. 

She  writes,  when  looking  back  on  this  period 
from  a  long  distance  of  time,  — 


142  GEORGE    SAND. 

After  the  despairs  of  my  youth,  I  was  governed  by  too 
many  illusions.  Morbid  scepticism  was  succeeded  in  me 
by  too  much  kindliness  and  ingenuousness.  A  thousand 
times  over  I  was  duped  by  dreams  of  an  archangelic 
fusion  of  the  opposing  forces  in  the  great  strife  of  ideas. 

Her  novel  Horace,  written  for  the  Revue  des 
Deux  Mondesy  was  rejected  —  as  subversive  of 
law  and  order — by  the  editor,  except  on  condi- 
tion of  alterations  which  she  declined  to  make. 

After  this  temporary  rupture  with  Buloz, 
Madame  Sand's  services  were  largely  appropri- 
ated by  the  Revue  Independante,  a  new  journal 
founded  in  1840  by  her  friends  Pierre  Leroux 
and  Louis  Viardot,  in  conjunction  with  whose 
names  hers  appears  on  the  title  page  as  leading 
contributor.  For  this  periodical  no  theories 
could  be  too  advanced,  no  fictitious  illustrations 
too  audacious,  and  to  its  pages  accordingly  was 
Horace  transferred.  Among  the  secondary 
characters  in  this  novel  figure  a  young  couple, 
immaculate  otherwise  in  principle  and  in  con- 
duct, but  who  as  converts  to  St.  Simonism  have 
dispensed  with  the  ordinary  legal  sanction  to 
their  union.  Perhaps  a  more  solid  objection  to 
its  insertion  in  the  Revue  des  Deux  Mondes  was 
the  picture  introduced  of  the  Jmcnte  of  June 
1832,  painted  in  heroic  colors.  Both  these  fea- 
tures, however,  are  purely  incidental.  The  main 
interest  and  the  real  strength  of  the  book  lie  in 


SOLITUDE,  SOCIETY,  ETC.  143 

a  remarkable  study  of  character-development — 
that  of  the  chief  personage,  Horace.  It  is  a 
cleverly  painted  portrait  of  a  type  that  reap- 
pears, with  slight  modifications,  in  all  ages  ;  a 
moral  charlatan,  who  half  imposes  on  himself, 
and  entirely  for  a  while  on  other  people.  A 
would-be  hero,  genius,  and  chivalrous  lover,  he 
has  none  of  the  genuine  qualities  needed  for 
sustaining  the  parts.  Nonchalant  and  inert  of 
temperament,  he  is  capable  of  nothing  beyond  a 
short  course  of  successful  affectation.  The 
imposition  breaking  down  at  last,  he  sinks  help- 
lessly into  the  unheroic  mediocrity  of  position 
and  pretension  for  which  alone  he  is  fit. 

A  veritable  attempt  at  a  Socialist  novel  is  the 
Compagnon  du  Tour  de  France  written  in  the 
course  of  1840,  which  must  surely  be  ranked  as 
one  of  the  weakest  of  George  Sand's  produc- 
tions. Exactly  the  converse  of  Horace  may  be 
said  of  this  book.  In  the  former,  those  most 
repelled  by  the  revolutionary  doctrines  flashing 
out  here  and  there,  will  yet  be  struck  and 
interested  by  the  masterly  piece  of  character- 
painting  that  makes  of  the  novel  a  success. 
The  utmost  fanaticism  for  the  ideas  ventilated 
in  the  Compagnon  du  Tour  de  France  can  recon- 
cile no  reader  to  the  dullness  and  unreality  of 
the  story  which  make  of  it  a  failure.  For  her 
socialism  itself,  as  set  forth  in  her  writings,  dis- 


144  GEORGE    SAND. 

passionate  examination  of  what  she  actually 
inculcated,  leaves  but  little  warrant,  in  the  state 
of  progress  now  reached,  for  echoing  the  mighty 
outcry  raised  against  it  at  the  time.  No  doubt 
she  thought  that  a  complete  reorganization  of 
society  on  a  new  basis  was  eminently  to  be 
desired.  But  what  she  definitely  advocated 
was,  first,  free  education  for  the  poor,  and 
secondly,  some  fairer  adjustment  of  the  rela- 
tions to  each  other  of  capital  and  labor.  As  to 
the  first,  authority  has  already  sanctioned  her 
opinion ;  the  second  question,  if  unsettled,  has 
become  a  first  preoccupation  with  statesmen 
and  philosophers  of  all  denominations  in  the 
present  day. 

With  regard  to  the  complete  solution  of  the 
problem,  she  leaves  her  socialist  heroes,  as  she 
herself  felt,  in  doubt  and  perplexity.  There 
was  something  in  the  schemes  and  doctrines  she 
conscientiously  approved,  irreconcilable  with 
her  artist-nature  —  a  materialistic  tendency 
which  clashed  with  her  poetical  instincts. 
When  the  stern  demagogue  Michel  denounced 
the  whole  tribe  of  artists  as  a  corrupting  influ- 
ence, enervating  to  the  courage  and  will  of  a 
nation,  she  rose  up  energetically  in  defence  of 
the  confraternity  to  which  she  was  born  :  — 

Will  you  tell  me,  pray,  what  you  mean,  with  your 
declamations  against  artists  ?  Cry  out  against  them  as 


SOLITUDE,  SOCIETY,  ETC.  145 

much  as  you  please,  but  respect  art.  Oh,  you  Vandal! 
I  like  that  stern  sectarian  who  wants  to  dress  Taglioni  in 
a  stuff-gown  and  sabots,  and  set  Liszt's  hands  to  turn  the 
machinery  of  a  wine-press,  and  who  yet,  as  he  lies  on  the 
grass,  finds  the  tears  come  into  his  eyes  at  the  least 
linnet's  song,  and  who  makes  a  disturbance  in  the  theatre 
to  stop  Othello  from  murdering  Malibran  !  The  austere 
citizen  would  suppress  artists  as  social  excrescences 
that  absorb  too  much  of  the  sap  ;  but  this  gentleman  is 
fond  of  vocal  music,  and  so  will  spare  the  singers.  Let  us 
hope  that  painters  will  find  one  among  your  strong  heads 
who  appreciates  painting,  and  won't  wall  up  all  studio 
windows.  And  as  for  the  poets,  they  are  your  cousins; 
and  you  don't  despise  their  forms  of  language  and  their 
rhythmical  mechanism  when  you  want  to  make  an  impres- 
sion on  the  idle  crowd.  You  will  go  to  them  to  take 
lessons  in  metaphor,  and  how  to  make  use  of  it. 

Unfortunately  for  the  cause  of  the  superiority  of 
antiquity,  whenever  you  go  to  hear  Berlioz's  Funeral 
March,  the  least  that  can  happen  to  you  will  be  to  con- 
fess that  this  music  is  rather  better  than  what  they  used 
to  give  us  in  Sparta,  when  we  served  under  Lycurgus ; 
you  will  think  that  Apollo,  displeased  to  see  us  sacrificing 
to  Pallas  exclusively,  has  played  us  a  trick  in  giving 
lessons  to  that  Babylonian,  so  that  by  the  exercise  of  a 
magnetic  and  disastrous  power  over  us,  he  may  lead  our 
spirits  astray. 

And  she  would  prove  to  the  demagogue,  out 
of  his  own  mouth,  that  everything  cannot  be  re- 
duced to  "bread  and  shoes  all  round,"  as  the 
grand  desideratum.  Give  these  to  men,  it  will 
not  suffice.  The  eloquent  orator  instinctively 
seeks  besides  to  impart  "  hallowed  emotions 


146  GEORGE    SAND. 

and  mystic  enthusiasm  to  those  who  toil  and 
sweat  —  he  teaches  them  to  hope,  to  dream  of 
God,  to  take  courage  and  lift  themselves  above 
the  sickening  miseries  of  human  conditions  by 
the  thought  of  a  future,  chimerical  it  may  be, 
but  strengthening  and  sublime." 

For  a  period,  however,  she  was  too  fascinated 
by  the  new  ideas  to  judge  them,  and  she 
straightway  sought  in  her  art  a  means  of  popular- 
izing them.  "These  ideas,"  she  writes  in  a 
later  preface  to  her  socialist  novel,  Le  Ptcht 
de  M.  Antoine,  "at  which,  as  yet  but  a  small 
number  of  conservative  spirits  had  taken 
alarm,  had,  as  yet,  only  really  begun  to 
sprout  in  a  small  number  of  attentive,  labor- 
ious minds.  The  government,  so  long  as  no 
actual  form  of  political  application  was  assumed, 
was  not  to  be  disquieted  by  theories,  and  let 
every  man  make  his  own,  put  forth  his  dream, 
and  innocently  construct  his  city  of  the  future, 
by  his  own  fireside,  in  the  garden  of  his  im- 
agination." 

She  was  aware  that  her  readers  thought  her 
novels  getting  more  and  more  tedious,  in  pro- 
portion as  she  communicated  to  her  fictitious 
heroes  and  heroines  the  pre-occupations  of  her 
brain,  and  that  she  was  thus  stepping  out  of 
the  domain  of  art.  But  she  affirmed  she  could 
never  help  writing  of  whatever  was  absorbing 


SOLITUDE,  SOCIETY,  ETC.  147 

her  thoughts  and  feelings  at  the  moment,  and 
must  take  her  chance  of  boring  the  public. 
Fortunately  for  Le  Pe'cJie'  de  M.  Antoine,  nature 
and  human  nature  are  here  allowed  to  claim  the 
larger  share  of  our  attention,  and  philosophy  is 
a  secondary  feature.  The  scene  is  laid  in  the 
picturesque  Marche  country  on  the  confines  of 
Berry,  a  day's  journey  from  Nohant,  and  we 
are  glad  to  linger  with  her  along  the  rocky 
banks  of  the  Creuse,  or  among  the  ruined 
castles  of  Crozant  and  Chateaubrun.  The  novel 
contains  much  that  is  original  and  admirable  in 
the  drawing  of  characters  of  the  most  opposite 
classes. 

Finally,  in  Le  Meunier  d'  Angibault*  written 
as  was  the  last-mentioned  work  some  four  or 
five  years  later  (1844-45),  but  which  may  be 
named  here,  as  making  up  with  Le  Compagnon 
du  Tour  dc  France  the  trio  of  "socialist"  nov- 
els, the  Tendenz  does  not  interfere  to  the  detri- 
ment of  the  artistic  plan  of  the  book.  In  it 
the  romantic  elements  of  the  remote  country 
nook  she  inhabited  are  cleverly  brought 
together,  without  departing  too  widely  from 
probability.  The  dilapidated  castle,  the  pictur- 
esque mill,  the  traditions  of  brigandage  two 
generations  ago,  all  these  were  realities  famil- 

*  The  Miller  of  Angibault.  Translated  by  M.  E.  Dewey. 
Boston,  Boberts  Brothers. 


148  GEORGE  SAND. 

iar  to  her  notice.  The  painting  of  the  country 
and  country  people  is  masterly ;  and  there  is 
not  a  passage  in  the  book  to  offend  the  taste 
of  the  most  scrupulous  reader.  Nor  can  it  be 
justly  impugned  on  the  ground  of  inculcating 
disturbing  political  principles.  The  personages, 
in  their  preference  of  poverty  and  obscurity  to 
rank  and  wealth,  may,  in  the  judgment  of  some, 
think  and  conduct  themselves  like  chimerical 
dreamers,  but  their  actions,  however  quixotic, 
concern  themselves  alone. 

But,  previous  to  either  of  the  two  novels  last 
named,  she  had  presented  the  world  with  a 
more  ambitious  work,  whose  merit  was  to 
compel  universal  acknowledgment  —  the  most 
important,  in  fact,  she  had  produced  for  eight 
years. 


CHAPTER  VII. 

CONSUELO HOME    LIFE    AT    NOHANT. 

CONSUELO  first  appeared  in  the  Revue  Indtpen- 
dante,  1842—43.  This  noble  book  might  not  be 
inaptly  described  as, 

—  a  whole  which,  irregular  in  parts, 
Yet  left  a  grand  impression  on  the  mind. 

Its  reckless  proportions  naturally  "  shocked  the 
connoisseurs"  among  literary  critics,  especially 
in  her  own  land  ;  but  nevertheless  it  became, 
and  deservedly,  one  of  her  most  popular  pro- 
ductions, and  did  more  than  any  other  single 
novel  she  ever  wrote  to  spread  her  popularity 
abroad.  If  Indiana,  Valentine,  and  Lttia  had 
never  been  -written  to  create  the  fame  of  George 
Sand,  Consnclo  would  have  done  so,  and  may  be 
said  to  have  established  it  over  again,  on  a 
better  and  more  lasting  basis.  Upon  so  well- 
known  a  work  lengthened  comment  here  would 
be  superfluous.  Originally  intended  for  a  nov- 
elette, —  the  opening  chapters  appear  in  the 
Revue  under  the  modest  heading,  Consuelo, 


I$0  GEORGE    SAND. 

conte,  —  the  beginning  was  so  successful  that 
the  author  was  urged  to  extend  her  plan 
beyond  its  first  proposed  limits.  The  novel  is 
an  ephemeral  form  of  art,  no  doubt,  but  it  is 
difficult  to  conceive  of  a  stage  of  social  and 
intellectual  progress  when  the  first  part  of 
Consuelo  will  cease  to  be  read  with  interest  and 
delight. 

The  heroine  once  transported  from  the 
lagunes  of  Venice  to  the  frontier  of  Bohemia 
and  the  castle  of  Rudolstadt,  the  character  of 
the  story  becomes  less  naturalistic ;  the  story- 
teller loses  herself  somewhat  in  subterranean 
passages  and  the  mazes  of  adventure  generally. 
She  wrote  on,  she  acknowledges,  at  hap-hazard, 
tempted  and  led  away  by  the  new  horizons 
which  the  artistic  and  historical  researches  her 
work  required  kept  opening  to  her  view.  But 
the  powerful  contrast  between  the  two  pictures, 
—  of  bright,  sunshiny,  free,  sensuous,  careless 
Venetian  folk-life,  and  of  the  stern  gloom  of 
the  mediaeval  castle,  where  the  more  spiritual 
consolations  of  existence  come  into  promi- 
nence —  is  singularly  effective  and  original.  So 
also  is  the  charming  way  in  which  an  incident  in 
the  boyhood  of  young  Joseph  Haydn  is  treated 
by  her  fancy,  in  the  episode  of  Consuelo's  flight 
from  the  castle,  when  he  becomes  her  fellow- 
traveller,  and  their  adventures  across  country 


CONSUEL  O  —  HOME  LIFE.  1 5 1 

are  told  with  such  zest  and  entrain,  in  pages 
where  life-sketches  of  character,  such  as  the 
good-natured,  self-indulgent  canon,  the  violent, 
abandoned  Gorilla,  make  us  forget  the  wildest 
improbabilities  of  the  fiction  itself.  The  con- 
cluding portion  of  the  book,  again  entirely 
different  in  frame,  with  its  delineation  of 
art-life  in  a  fashionable  capital,  Vienna,  is  as 
true  as  it  is  brilliant.  It  teems  with  suggestive 
ideas  on  the  subject  of  musical  and  dramatic 
art,  and  with  excellently  drawn  types.  The  re- 
lations of  professional  and  amateur,  the  contra- 
dictions and  contentions  to  which,  in  a  woman's 
nature,  the  rival  forces  of  love  and  of  an  artistic 
vocation  may  give  rise,  have  never  been  better 
portrayed  in  any  novel.  The  heroine,  Con- 
suelo,  is  of  course  an  ideal  character:  her 
achievements  partake  of  the  marvellous  ;  and 
there  are  digressions  in  the  book  which  are  dif- 
fuse in  the  extreme ;  but  nowhere  is  the 
author's  imagination  more  attractively  displayed 
and  her  style  more  engaging.  The  tone 
throughout  is  noble  and  pure.  To  look  on 
Consuelo  as  an  agreeable  story  merely  is  to 
overlook  the  elevation  of  the  moral  standard  of 
the  book,  in  which  much  of  its  power  resides. 
It  marks  more  strongly  than  Mauprat  the 
change  that  had  come  over  the  spirit  of  George 
Sand's  compositions. 


152  GEORGE  SAND. 

In  the  continuation,  La  Comtesse  de  Rodol- 
stadt,  which  followed  immediately  in  the  Revue 
Ind/pendante,  1843,  the  novelist  strays  further 
and  further  from  reality  —  the  terra  firma  on 
which  her  fancy  improvises  such  charming 
dances.  Here  she  only  touches  the  ground  now 
and  then,  and  between  whiles  her  imagination 
asks  ours  to  accompany  it  on  the  most  extraor- 
dinary flights.  As  a  novel  of  adventure,  it  is 
written  with  unflagging  spirit ;  and  in  the  rites 
and  doctrines  of  the  Illuminati,  an  idealization 
of  the  feature  of  the  secret  sects  of  the  last 
century,  she  found  a  new  medium  of  expression 
for  her  sentiments  regarding  the  present  abuses 
of  society  and  the  need  of  thorough  renovation. 
Secret  societies,  at  that  time,  were  extremely 
numerous  and  active  among  the  Republican 
workers  in  France.  Madame  Sand  seems 
thoroughly  to  have  appreciated  their  dangers, 
and  has  expressly  stated  that  she  was  no  advo- 
cate of  such  sects  ;  that  though  under  a  tyranny, 
such  as  that  which  oppressed  Germany  in  the 
times  of  which  she  wrote,  they  may  be  a  neces- 
sity, elsewhere  they  are  an  abuse  if  not  a  crime. 
"  The  custom  indeed  I  have  never  regarded  as 
applicable  for  good  in  our  time  and  our  country ; 
I  have  never  believed  that  it  can  bring  forth 
anything  in  future  but  a  dictatorship,  and  the 
dictatorial  principle  is  one  I  have  never  ac- 
cepted. "  (Histoire  de  ma  Vie.} 


CONSUELO  —  HOME  LIFE.  153 

But  the  romance  of  the  subject  was  irresistibly 
tempting  to  her  inventive  faculty.  "  Tell  Leroux 
to  send  me  some  more  books  on  freemasonry, 
if  he  can  find  any,"  she  writes  to  a  correspon- 
dent at  Paris  whilst  working  at  the  Comtesse  de 
Rudolstadt  at  Nohant ;  "  I  am  plunged  into  it 
over  head  and  ears.  Tell  him  also  that  he  has 
there  thrown  me  into  an  abyss  of  follies  and 
absurdities,  but  that  I  am  dabbling  about  cour- 
ageously though  prepared  to  extract  nothing  but 
nonsense." 

For  the  musical  miracles  which  it  is  given  to 
Madame  Sand's  heroes  and  heroines  to  perform 
at  a  trifling  cost,  she  may  well  at  this  time  have 
come  to  regard  them  as  almost  in  the  natural 
order.  She  had  received  her  second,  and  her  best 
musical  education  through  the  contemplation  of 
original  musical  genius,  of  the  rarest  quality, 
among  her  most  intimate  friends,  her  constant 
guests  at  Paris  and  Nohant.  The  vocal  and 
instrumental  feats  of  Consuelo  and  Count  Albert 
themselves  are  not  more  astonishing  than  the 
actual  recorded  achievements  of  Liszt,  pro- 
nounced a  perfect  virtuoso  at  twelve  years  old  — 
and  no  wonder  !  The  boy  had  so  carried  away 
his  accompanyists,  the  band  of  the  Italian  opera 
at  Paris,  by  his  performance  of  the  solo  in  an 
orchestral  piece,  that  when  the  moment  came 
for  them  to  strike  inr  one  and  all  forgot  to  do 


154  GEORGE    SAND. 

so,  but  remained  silent,  petrified  with  amaze- 
ment. And  Liszt  when  in  the  full  development 
of  his  genius,  had,  as  we  have  seen,  been  the  art- 
comrade  of  George  Sand ;  he  had  spent  the 
whole  of  the  summer  season  of  1837  at  Nohant, 
transcribing  Beethoven's  symphonies  for  the 
piano-forte  whilst  she  wrote  her  romances  ;  she 
was  familiar  with  his  marvellous  improvisations. 
In  her  "Trip  to  Chamounix"  {Lettres  d'nn  Voy- 
ageur,  No.  VI.)  she  has  drawn  a  vivid  picture 
of  their  extraordinary  effect,  describing  his  un- 
rehearsed organ  recital  in  the  Cathedral  of 
Freibourg  to  his  little  party  of  travelling  com- 
panions. Nor  was  the  charm  of  Chopin's  gift 
less  magical.  The  well-known  anecdotes  related 
on  this  subject  are  like  so  many  glimpses  into 
a  musical  paradise.  Madame  Sand  has  given 
us  an  amusing  one  herself.  It  is  evening  in 
her  salon  at  Paris.  At  the  piano  is  Chopin  ; 
and  she,  her  son,  Eugene  Delacroix,  and  the 
Polish  poet  Mickiewicz  sit  listening  whilst  the 
composer,  in  an  inspired  mood,  is  extemporizing 
in  the  sublimest  manner  to  the  little  circle.  All 
are  in  silent  raptures ;  when  the  servant  breaks 
in  with  the  alarm  — the  house  is  on  fire.  They 
rush  to  the  room  where  the  flames  are,  and 
succeed  after  a  time  in  extinguishing  them. 
Then  they  perceive  that  the  poet  Mickiewicz  is 
missing.  On  returning  to  the  salon  they  find 


CONSUELO—HOME  LIFE.  155 

him  as  they  left  him,  rapt,  entranced,  uncon- 
scious of  the  stir  around  him,  of  the  scare  that 
had  driven  all  the  rest  from  the  room.  "  He 
did  not  even  know  we  had  gone  and  left  him 
alone.  He  was  listening  to  Chopin,  he  had 
continued  to  hear  him."  Nor  could  the  be- 
witched poet  be  brought  down  from  the  clouds 
that  evening.  He  remained  deaf  to  their  ban- 
ter, to  Madame  Sand's  laughing  admonition, 
"  Next  time  I  am  with  you  when  the  house  takes 
fire,  I  must  begin  by  putting  you  into  a  safe 
place,  for  I  see  you  would  get  burnt  like  a  mere 
faggot,  before  you  knew  what  was  going  on." 

Eugene  Delacroix,  one  of  Madame  Sand's 
earliest  and  most  valued  friends  in  the  artist- 
world,  and  one  of  the  many  with  whom  she  en- 
joyed along  and  unclouded  friendship,  gives  in 
his  letters  some  agreeable  pictures  of  life  at 
Nohant,  during  his  visits  there  in  the  successive 
summers  of  1 845  and  1 846  :  — 

When  not  assembled  together  with  the  rest  for  dinner, 
breakfast,  a  game  of  billiards,  or  a  walk,  you  are  in  your 
room  reading,  or  lounging  on  your  sofa.  Every  moment 
there  come  in  through  the  window  open  on  the  garden, 
"puffs  of  music"  from  Chopin,  working  away  on  one  side, 
which  mingle  with  the  song  of  nightingales  and  the  scent 
of  the  roses. 

He  describes  a  quiet,  monastic-like  existence, 
simple  and  studious:  "We  have  not  even  the 


156  GEORGE    SAND. 

distraction  of  neighbors  and  friends  around. 
In  this  country  everybody  stays  at  home,  to 
look  after  his  oxen  and  his  land.  One  would 
become  a  fossil  in  a  very  short  time." 

The  greatest  event  for  the  visitor  was  a 
village-festival  —  a  wedding  or  a  Saint's  day  — 
when  the  rustic  dances  went  on  under  the  tall 
elms  to  the  roaring  of  the  bagpipes.  Peasant 
youths  and  peasant  maids  joined  hands  in  the 
bourre'e,  the  characteristic  dance  of  the  country  ; 
now,  we  fear,  surviving  in  tradition  only,  but 
then  still  popular.  The  great  artist  was  fired  to 
paint  a  "Ste.  Anne,"  patron-saint  of  Nohant,  In 
honor  of  the  place,  but  his  work  progressed  but 
slowly.  He  writes  in  August,  1846: — "I  am 
frightfully  lazy,  I  can  do  nothing,  I  hardly  read; 
and  yet  the  days  pass  too  quickly,  for  I  must 
soon  renounce  this  vie  de  chanoine,  and  return 
into  the  furnace  of  stirring  ideas,  good  and 
bad.  In  Berry  they  have  very  few  ideas,  but 
they  do  just  as  well  without."  Then  he  adds, 
"  Chopin  has  been  playing  Beethoven  to  me 
divinely  well.  That  is  worth  all  aestheticism." 

Little  theatrical  entertainments  of  an  origi- 
nal kind,  presided  over  by  Madame  Sand,  and 
carried  out  by  herself,  her  children,  and  their 
young  friends,  became  in  time  a  prominent 
feature  of  life  at  Nohant.  She  thus  describes 
their  nature  and  commencements  :  — 


CONSUELO—HOME  LIFE.  157 

During  the  long  evenings  I  took  it  into  my  head  to 
devise  for  my  family  theatricals  on  the  old  Italian 
pattern — commedia  deW  arte — plays  in  which  the  dia- 
logue, itself  extemporized,  yet  follows  the  outlines  of  a 
written  plan,  placarded  behind  the  scenes.  It  is  some- 
thing like  the  charades  acted  in  society,  the  development 
of  which  depends  on  the  talent  contributed  by  the  actors. 
It  was  with  these  that  we  began,  but  little  by  little  the 
word  of  the  charade  disappeared.  We  acted  wild 
saynetes,  afterwards  comedies  of  plot  and  intrigue,  finally 
dramas  of  event  and  emotion. 

All  began  with  pantomime ;  and  this  was  Chopin's 
invention.  He  sat  at  the  piano  and  extemporized,  whilst 
the  youug  people  acted  scenes  in  dumb  show  and  danced 
comic  ballets.  These  charming  improvisations  turned 
the  children's  heads  and  made  their  legs  nimble.  He 
led  them  just  as  he  chose,  making  them  pass,  according 
to  his  fancy,  from  the  amusing  to 'the  severe,  from  bur- 
lesque to  solemnity — now  graceful,  now  impassioned. 
We  invented  all  kinds  of  costumes,  so  as  to  play  differ- 
ent characters  in  succession.  No  sooner  did  the  artist 
see  them  appear  than  he  adapted  his  theme  and  rhythm 
to  the  parts  wonderfully.  This  would  be  repeated  for 
two  or  three  evenings;  after  which  the  maestro,  depart- 
ing for  Paris,  would  leave  us  quite  excited,  exalted, 
determined  not  to  let  the  spark  be  lost  with  which  he 
had  electrified  us. 

Chopin  was  possessed  of  much  dramatic 
talent  himself,  and  was  an  admirable  mimic. 
When  a  boy  it  had  been  said  of  him  that  he 
was  born  to  be  a  great  actor.  His  capacity  for 
facial  expressions  was  something  extraordinary; 


158  GEORGE    SAND. 

he  often  amused  his  friends  by  imitations  of 
fellow-musicians,  reproducing  their  manner  and 
gestures  to  the  life  ;  so  well  as  actually  on  more 
than  one  occasion  to  take  in  the  spectator. 

Madame  Sand  thus  gives  account  of  the  even 
tenor  of  her  way,  in  a  letter  of  September, 
1845:- 

I  have  been  in  Paris  till  June,  and  since  then  am  a. 
Nohant  until  the  winter,  as  usual ;  for  henceforward  my 
life  is  ruled  as  regularly  as  music  paper.  I  have  written 
two  or  three  novels,  one  of  which  is  just  going  to  appear. 

My  son  is  still  thin  and  delicate,  but  otherwise  well. 
He  is  the  best  being,  the  gentlest,  most  equable,  indus- 
trious, simple-minded,  and  straightforward  ever  seen. 
Our  characters,  like  our  hearts,  agree  so  well  that  we  can 
hardly  live  a  day  apart.  He  is  entering  his  twenty-third 
year,  Solange  her  eighteenth.  We  have  our  ways  of 
merriment,  not  noisy,  but  sustained,  which  bring  our  ages 
nearer  together,  and  when  we  have  been  working  hard  all 
the  week  we  allow  ourselves,  by  way  of  a  grand  holiday, 
to  go  and  eat  our  cake  out  of  doors  some  way  off,  in  a 
wood  or  an  old  ruin,  with  my  brother,  who  is  like  a  sturdy 
peasant,  full  of  fun  and  good  nature,  and  who  dines  with 
us  every  day,  seeing  that  he  lives  not  two  miles  off. 
Such  are  our  grand  pranks. 

Sometimes  these  little  outings  would  origi- 
nate a  novel,  as  with  the  Meunier  d1  Angibmdt, 
which  she  ascribes  to  "  a  walk,  a  discovery,  a 
day  of  leisure,  an  hour  of  idleness."  On  a 
ramble  with  her  children  she  came  upon  what 


CONSUELO  —  HOME   LIFE.  159 

she  calls  "a  nook  in  a  wild  paradise  ;"  a  mill, 
whose  owner  had  allowed  everything  to  grow 
around  the  sluices  that  chose  to  spring  up,  briar 
and  alder,  oaks  and  rushes.  The  stream,  left  to 
follow  its  devices,  had  forced  its  way  through 
the  sand  and  the  grass  in  a  network  of  little 
waterfalls,  covered  below  in  the  summer  time 
with  thick  tufts  of  aquatic  plants. 

It  was  enough ;  the  seed  was  sown  and  the 
fruit  resulted.  "The  apple  falling  from  the 
tree  led  Newton  to  the  discovery  of  one  of  the 
grand  laws  of  the  universe.  ...  In  scien- 
tific works  of  genius,  reflection  derives  the 
causes  of  things  from  a  single  fact.  In  art's 
humbler  fancies,  that  isolated  fact  is  dressed 
and  completed  in  a  dream." 

The  picture  given  by  Madame  Sand  and  her 
guests  of  these  years  of  her  life  is  charming 
enough,  and  in  certain  ways  seems  an  ideal  kind 
of  existence,  amid  beloved  children,  friends, 
pleasant  and  calm  surroundings,  and  the  sweets 
of  successful  literary  activity.  But  if  it  had  its 
bright  lights,  it  had  also  its  deep  shadows. 
For  every  fresh  pleasure  and  interest  crowded 
into  her  existence,  there  entered  a  fresh  source 
of  anxiety  and  trouble.  Age,  in  bringing  her 
more  power  of  endurance,  had  not  blunted  her 
sensibilities.  As  usual  with  the  strongest  na- 
tures in  their  hours  of  depression  —  and  none  so 


160  GEORGE  SAND. 

strong  as  to  escape  these  —  she  could  then  look 
for  no  help  except  from  herself.  Those  ac- 
customed, like  her,  to  shirk  no  responsibility, 
no  burden,  to  invite  others  to  lean  on  them, 
and  to  ask  no  support,  if  their  fortitude  gives 
way  find  the  allowance,  help  and  sympathy  so 
easily  accorded  to  their  weaker  fellow-creatures 
nowhere  ready  for  them.  The  exclamation 
wrung  from  one  of  the  characters  in  a  later 
work  of  Madame  Sand's,  may  be  but  a  faithful 
echo  of  the  cry  of  her  own  nature  in  some 
moment  of  mental  torment.  "  Let  me  be 
weak  ;  I  have  been  seeming  to  be  strong  for  so 
long  a  time  !  " 

Chopin,  though  the  study  of  his  genius  had 
freshly  inspired  her  own,  and  greatly  extended 
her  comprehension  of  musical  art,  was  a  being 
to  whom  the  burden  of  his  own  life  was  too 
painful  to  allow  him  to  lighten  the  troubles  of 
another ;  a  partial  invalid,  a  prey  to  nervous 
irritation,  he  was  dependent  on  her  to  soothe 
and  cheer  him  at  the  best  of  times,  and  to  be 
nurse  and  secretary  besides  when  he  was  pros- 
trated by  illness  or  despondency.  One  is  loth 
to  call  selfish  a  nature  so  attractive  in  its 
refinement,  so  unhappy  in  its  over-suscepti- 
bility. But  it  is  obvious  that  such  a  one  might 
easily  become  a  trial  to  those  he  loved.  With 
all  its  vigor  her  nervous  system  could  not 


CONSUELO  —  HOME  LIFE.  l6l 

escape  the  exhaustion  and  disturbance  that 
attend  on  incessant  brain-work.  "  Those  who 
have  nothing  to  do,"  she  remarks,  "when  they 
see  artists  produce  with  facility,  are  ready  to 
wonder  at  how  few  hours,  how  few  instants, 
these  can  reserve  for  themselves.  For  such  do 
not  know  how  these  gymnastics  of  the  imagina- 
tion, if  they  do  not  affect  your  health,  yet  leave 
an  excitation  of  your  nerves,  an  obsession  of 
mental  pictures,  a  languor  of  spirit,  that  forbid 
you  to  carry  on  any  other  kind  of  work." 

Although  her  constitution  was  even  stronger 
than  in  her  youth,  she  had  for  some  years  been 
subject  to  severe  attacks  of  neuralgia.  "Ma- 
dame Sand  suffers  terribly  from  violent  head- 
aches and  pain  in  her  eyes,"  remarks  Delacroix, 
in  one  of  the  letters  above  quoted,  "which  she 
takes  upon  herself  to  surmount  as  far  as  possi- 
ble, with  a  great  effort,  so  as  not  to  distress  us 
by  what  she  goes  through."  Her  habit  of  writ- 
ing principally  at  night  and  contenting  herself 
with  the  least  possible  allowance  of  repose,  few 
could  have  persisted  in  for  so  long  without 
breaking  down.  For  many  years  she  never 
took  more  than  four  hours  sleep.  The  strain 
began  to  tell  on  her  eye-sight  at  last,  and 
already  in  a  letter  of  1842  she  speaks  of  being 
temporarily  compelled  to  suspend  this  practice 
of  night-work,  to  her  great  regret,  as  in  the  day- 
6 


1 62  GEORGE  SAND. 

light  hours  she  was  never  secure  from  interrup- 
tion. Only  her  abnormal  power  of  activity  and 
of  bearing  fatigue  could  have  enabled  her  to 
fulfill  so  strenuously  the  responsibilities  she  had 
undertaken  to  her  children,  her  private  friends, 
and  the  public.  The  pressure  of  literary  work 
was  incessant,  and  whatever  her  dislike  to 
accounts  and  arithmetic  she  is  said  to  have  ful- 
filled her  engagements  to  editors  and  publishers 
with  the  regularity  and  punctuality  of  a  notary. 
Her  large  acquaintance,  relations  with  various 
classes,  various  projects,  literary,  political,  and 
philanthropical,  involved  an  immense  amount  of 
serious  correspondence  in  addition  to  that  aris- 
ing from  the  postal  persecution  -from  which  no 
celebrity  escapes.  Ladies  wrote  to  consult  her 
on  sentimental  subjects — to  inquire  of  her,  as 
of  an  oracle,  whether  they  should  bestow  their 
heart,  their  hand,  or  both,  upon  their  suitors ; 
poets,  to  solicit  her  patronage  and  criticism.  In 
the  course  of  a  single  half-year,  153  manuscripts 
were  sent  her  for  perusal !  She  replied  when  it 
seemed  fit,  conscientiously  and  ungrudgingly ; 
but  experience  had  made  her  less  expansive 
than  formerly  to  those  whose  overtures  she 
felt  to  be  prompted  by  curiosity  or  some  such 
idle  motive,  in  the  absence  of  any  sympathy  for 
her  ways  of  thinking.  "  I  am  not  to  be  caught 
in  my  words  with  indifferent  persons,"  she 


CONSUELO—HOME  LIFE.  163 

writes  to  M.  Charles  Duvernet,  describing  how, 
when  in  her  friend  Madame  Marliani's  salon  in 
Paris  she  heard  herself  and  her  political  allies 
or  their  opinions  attacked,  she  was  not  to  be 
provoked  into  argument  or  indignant  denial,  but 
went  on  quietly  with  her  work  of  hemming 
pocket-handkerchiefs.  "To  such  people  one 
speaks  through  the  medium  of  the  Press.  If 
they -will  not  attend,  no  matter." 

Her  sex,  her  anomalous  position,  her  freedom 
of  expression  and  action,  exposed  her  to  an 
extent  quite  exceptional,  even  for  a  public  char- 
acter, to  the  shafts  of  malice  and  slander. 
Accustomed  to  have  to  brave  the  worst  from 
such  attacks,  she  might  and  did  arrive  at  treat- 
ing them  with  an  indifference  that  was  not, 
however,  in  her  nature,  which  shrank  from  the 
observation  and  personal  criticism  of  the  vulgar. 

To  a  young  poet  of  promise  in  whose  welfare 
she  took  interest,  she  writes,  August,  1842  :  — 

Never  show  my  letters  except  to  your  mother,  your 
wife,  or  your  greatest  friend.  It  is  a  shy  habit,  a  mania  I 
have  to  the  last  degree.  The  idea  that  I  am  not  writing 
for  those  alone  to  whom  I  write,  or  for  those  who  love 
them  thoroughly,  would  freeze  my  heart  and  my  hand 
directly.  Everyone  has  a  fault.  Mine  is  a  misanthropy 
in  my  outward  habits  —  for  all  that  I  have  no  passion 
left  in  me  but  the  love  of  my  fellow-creatures ;  but  with 
the  small  services  that  my  heart  and  my  faith  can  render 
in  this  world,  my  personality  has  nothing  to  do.  Some 


164  GEORGE   SAND. 

people  have  grieved  me  very  much,  unconsciously,  by 
talking  and  writing  about  me  personally  and  my  doings, 
even  though  favorably,  and  meaning  well.  Respect  this 
malady  of  spirit. 

Madame  Sand,  being  naturally  undemonstra- 
tive, was  commonly  more  or  less  tongue-tied 
and  chilled  in  the  presence  of  a  stranger,  and 
she  had  a  frank  dread  of  introductions  and  first 
interviews,  even  when  the  acquaintance  was 
one  she  desired  to  make.  Sometimes  she  asks 
her  friends  to  prepare  such  new  comers  for 
receiving  an  unfavorable  first  impression,  and  to 
beg  them  not  to  be  unduly  prejudiced  thereby. 
Such  a  one  would  find  the  persecution  of  lion- 
hunters  intolerable,  and  now  and  then  this 
drove  her  to  extremities.  Great  must,  indeed, 
have  been  the  wrath  of  one  of  these  irrepressi- 
bles, who,  more  obstinate  than  the  rest,  failing 
by  fair  means  to  get  an  introduction  to  George 
Sand,  calmly  pushed  his  way  into  Nohant 
unauthorized  by  anyone,  whereupon  her  friends 
conspired  to  serve  him  the  trick  it  must  be 
owned  he  deserved ;  and  which  we  give  in  the 
words  of  Madame  Sand,  writing  to  the  Comtesse 
d'Agoult.  The  story  is  told  also  by  Liszt  in 
his  letters  :  — 

M.  X.  is  ushered  into  my  room.  A  respectable-looking 
person  there  receives  him.  She  was  about  forty  years  of 
age,  but  you  might  give  her  sixty  at  a  pinch.  She  had 


CONSUELO  —  HOME  LIFE.  165 

had  beautiful  teeth,  but  had  got  none  left.  All  passes 
away !  She  had  been  rather  good-looking,  but  was  so  no 
longer.  All  changes  !  Her  figure  was  corpulent,  and 
her  hands  were  soiled.  Nothing  is  perfect ! 

She  was  clad  in  a  gray  woolen  gown  spotted  with 
black,  and  lined  with  scarlet.  A  silk  handkerchief  was 
negligently  twisted  round  her  black  hair.  Her  shoes 
were  faulty,  but  she  was  thoroughly  dignified.  Now  and 
then  she  seemed  on  the  point  of  putting  an  s  or  a  /  in  the 
wrong  place,  but  she  corrected  herself  gracefully,  talked 
of  her  literary  works,  of  her  excellent  friend  M.  Rollinat, 
of  the  talents  of  her  visitor  which  had  not  failed  to  reach 
her  ears,  though  she  lived  in  complete  retirement,  over- 
whelmed with  work.  M.  G.  brought  her  a  foot-stool,  the 
children  called  her  mamma,  the  servants  Madame. 

She  had  a  gracious  smile,  and  much  more  distinguished 
manners  than  that  fellow  George  Sand.  In  a  word  X. 
was  happy  and  proud  of  his  visit.  Perched  in  a  big 
chair,  with  beaming  aspect,  arm  extended,  speech  abun- 
dant, there  he  stayed  for  a  full  quarter  of  an  hour  in 
ecstasies,  and  then  took  leave,  bowing  down  to  the 
ground  to  —  Sophie  ! 

It  was  the  maid  that  had  thus  been  success- 
fully passed  off  as  the  mistress,  who  with  her 
whole  household  enjoyed  a  long  and  hearty 
laugh  at  the  expense  of  the  departed  unbidden 
guest.  "  M.  X.  has  gone  off  to  Chateauroux," 
she  concludes,  "  on  purpose  to  give  an  account 
of  his  interview  with  me,  and  to  describe  me 
personally  in  all  the  cafes." 

This  anecdote  however  belongs  to  a  much 
earlier  period  of  her  life,  the  year  1837.  Of  her 


1 66  GEORGE  SAND. 

cordiality  and  kindliness  to  those  who  ap- 
proached her  in  a  right  spirit  of  sincerity  and 
simplicity,  many  have  spoken.  For  English 
readers  we  cannot  do  better  than  quote  Mr. 
Matthew  Arnold's  interesting  account,  given  in 
the  Fortnightly,  \  877,  of  his  visit  to  her  in  August, 
1846.  Desirous  of  seeing  the  green  lanes  of 
Berry,  the  rocky  heaths  of  Bourbonnais,  the 
descriptions  of  which  in  Valentine  and  Jeanne 
had  charmed  him  so  strongly,  the  traveller 
chose  a  route  that  brought  him  to  within  a  few 
miles  of  her  home  :  —  "I  addressed  to  Madame 
Sand,"  he  tells  us,  "the  sort  of  letter  of  which 
she  must  in  her  lifetime  have  had  scores — a 
letter  conveying  to  her,  in  bad  French,  the 
youthful  and  enthusiastic  homage  of  a  foreigner 
who  had  read  her  works  with  delight."  She 
responded  by  inviting  him  to  call  at  Nohant. 
He  came  and  joined  a  breakfast-party  that 
included  Madame  Sand  and  her  son  and 
daughter,  Chopin,  and  other  friends  —  Mr. 
Arnold  being  placed  next  to  the  hostess.  He 
says  of  her  :  — 

As  she  spoke,  her  eyes,  head,  bearing  were  all  of  them 
striking,  but  the  main  impression  she  made  was  one  of 
simplicity,  frank,  cordial  simplicity.  After  breakfast  she 
led  the  way  into  the  garden,  asked  me  a  few  kind  ques- 
tions about  myself  and  my  plans,  gathered  a  flower  or 
two  and  gave  them  to  me,  shook  hands  heartily  at  the 
gate,  and  I  saw  her  no  more. 


CONSUELO  —  HOME  LIFE  167 

During  the  eight  years  of  successful  literary 
activity,  lying  between  Madame  Sand's  return 
from  Majorca  and  the  Revolution  of  February, 
1848,  the  profits  of  her  work  had,  after  the 
first,  enabled  her  freely  to  spend  the  greater 
part  of  the  year  at  Nohant,  and  to  provide  a 
substantial  dowry  for  her  daughter.  But  the 
amassing  of  wealth  suited  neither  her  taste  nor 
her  principles.  She  writes  to  her  poet-portege 
M.  Poncy,  in  September,  1845  :  — 

We  are  in  easy  circumstances,  which  enables  us  to  do 
away  with  poverty  in  our  own  neighborhood,  and  if  we 
feel  the  sorrow  of  being  unable  to  do  away  with  that 
which  desolates  the  world  —  a  deep  sorrow,  especially  at 
my  age,  when  life  has  no  intoxicating  personality  -left, 
and  one  sees  plainly  the  spectacle  of  society  in  its  in- 
justices and  frightful  disorder  —  at  least  we  know 
nothing  of  ennui,  of  restless  ambition  and  selfish  pas- 
sions. We  have  a  sort  of  relative  happiness,  and  my 
children  enjoy  it  with  the  simplicity  of  their  age. 

As  for  me,  I  only  accept  it  in  trembling,  for  all  happiness 
is  like  a  theft  in  this  ill-regulated  world  of  men,  where 
you  cannot  enjoy  your  ease  or  your  liberty,  except  to  the 
detriment  of  your  fellow-creatures  —  by  the  force  of 
things,  the  law  of  inequality,  that  odious  law,  those 
odious  combinations,  the  thought  of  which  poisons  my 
sweetest  domestic  joys  and  revolts  me  against  myself  at 
every  moment.  I  can  only  find  consolation  in  vowing  to 
go  on  writing  as  long  as  I  have  a  breath  of  life  left  in  me, 
against  the  infamous  maxim,  "  Chacun  chez  sot,  chacun 
pour  sot."  Since  all  I  can  do  is  to  make  this  protest, 
make  it  I  shall,  in  every  key. 


1 68  GEORGE    SAND. 

Her  republican  friends  in  Berry  had  founded 
in  1844  a  local  journal  for  the  spread  of  liberal 
ideas — such  as  Lamartine  at  the  time  was 
supporting  at  Macon.  Madame  Sand  readily 
contributed  her  services  to  a  cause  where  she 
labored  for  the  enlightenment  of  the  masses  on 
all  subjects — truth,  justice,  religion,  liberty, 
fraternity,  duties,  and  rights.  The  govern- 
ment of  Louis  Philippe,  so  long  as  such  utter- 
ances attacked  no  definite  institution,  allowed 
an  almost  illimitable  freedom  in  expression  of 
opinion.  The  result  was  that  thought  had  ad- 
vanced so  far  ahead  of  action  that  social  philoso- 
phers had  grown  to  argue  as  though  practical 
obstacles  had  no  existence  —  to  be  rudely 
reminded  of  their  consequence,  when  brought 
to  the  front  in  1848,  and  acting  somewhat 
too  much  as  if  on  that  supposition. 

It  is  impossible  not  to  make  concerning 
Madame  Sand,  the  reflection  made  on  other 
foremost  workers  in  the  same  cause  of  organic 
social  reform  —  namely,  that  her  character  and 
her  instincts  were  in  curious  opposition  to  her 
ideas.  What  was  said  by  Madame  d'Agoult  of 
Louis  Blanc  applies  with  even  greater  force  to 
George  Sand  :  "  The  sentiment  of  personality 
was  never  stronger  than  in  this  opposer  of 
individualism,  communist  theories  had  for  their 
champion  one  most  unfit  to  be  absorbed  into 


CONSUELO  —  HOME  LIFE.  169 

the  community."  For  no  length  of  time  was 
the  idea  of  "  communism  "  accepted,  and  never 
was  it  advocated  by  her  except  in  the  most 
restricted  sense.  The  land-hunger,  or  rather 
land-greed,  of  the  small  proprietors  in  her 
neighborhood  had,  it  is  true,  given  her  a  cer- 
tain disgust  for  these  contested  possessions. 
But  from  the  preference  of  a  small  child  for  a 
garden  of  its  own  however  small,  to  another's 
however  large,  she  characteristically  infers  the 
instinct  of  property  as  a  law  of  nature  it  were 
preposterous  to  disallow,  and  furthermore  she 
lays  down  as  an  axiom  that,  "in  treating  the 
communistic  idea  it  is  necessary  first  to  dis- 
tinguish what  is  essential  in  liberty  and  work  to 
the  complete  existence  of  the  individual,  from 
what  is  collective."  When  forced  by  actual 
experience  to  point  out  what  she  holds  to  be 
the  rightful  application  of  the  idea,  she  limits  it 
to  voluntary  association  ;  and  she  hoped  great 
things  from  the  co-operative  principle,  as  tend- 
ing to  eliminate  the  ills  of  extreme  inequalities 
in  the  social  structure,  and  to  preserve  every- 
thing in  it  that  is  worth  preserving. 


CHAPTER     VIII. 

NOVELIST   AND    POLITICIAN. 

BY  her  novels  classed  as  "  socialistic,"  Madame 
Sand  had,  as  we  have  seen,  incurred  the  public 
hostility  of  those  whom  her  doctrines  alarmed. 
And  yet  her  "  communist"  heroes  and  heroines 
are  the  most  pacific  and  inoffensive  of  social 
influences.  They  merely  aspire  to  isolate  them- 
selves, and  personally  to  practice  principles  and 
virtues  of  the  highest  order;  unworldliness 
such  as,  if  general,  might  indeed  turn  the  earth 
into  the  desired  Utopia.  Nothing  can  be  said 
against  their  example,  unless  that  it  is  too  good, 
and  that  there  is  little  hope  of  its  being  widely 
followed. 

Charges  of  another  sort,  no  less  bitter,  and 
though  exaggerated,  somewhat  better  founded, 
assailed  her  after  the  appearance  in  1847  °f 
Lucrezia  Floriani,  a  novel  of  character-analysis 
entirely,  but  into  which  she  was  accused  of 
having  introduced  an  unflattering  portrait  of 
Frederic  Chopin,  whose  long  and  long-requited 
attachment  to  her  entitled  him  to  better  treat, 
ment  at  her  hands. 


NOVELIST  AND  POLITICIAN.          I /I 

With  respect  to  the  general  question  of  such 
alleged  fictitious  reproductions,  few  novelists 
escape  getting  into  trouble  on  this  head.  It 
has  been  aptly  observed  by  Mr.  Hamerton  that 
the  usual  procedure  of  the  reading  public  in 
such  cases  is  to  fix  on  some  real  personage  as 
distinctly  unlike  the  character  in  the  book  as 
possible,  for  the  original,  and  then  to  complain 
of  the  unfaithfulness  of  the  resemblance.  Mad- 
ame Sand's  taste  and  higher  art-instincts 
would  .  have  revolted  against  the  practice  — 
now  unfortunately  no  longer  confined  to  inferior 
writers  —  of  forcing  attention  to  a  novel  by 
making  it  the  gibbet  of  well-known  personalities, 
with  little  or  no  disguise ;  and  Chopin  himself, 
morbidly  sensitive  and  fanciful  though  he  was, 
read  her  work  without  perceiving  in  it  any  inten- 
tion there  to  portray  their  relations  to  each 
other,  which,  indeed,  had  differed  essentially 
from  those  of  the  personages  in  the  romance. 

Lucrezia  Floriani  is  a  cantatrice  of  genius, 
who,  whilst  still  young,  has  retired  from  the 
world,  indifferent  to  fame,  and  effectually  disen- 
chanted —  so  she  believes  —  with  passion. 
Despite  an  experience  strange  and  stormy,  even 
for  a  member  of  her  Bohemian  profession, 
Lucrezia  has  miraculously  preserved  intact  her 
native  nobility  of  soul,  and  appears  as  a  meet 
object  of  worship  to  a  fastidious  young  prince 


172  GEORGE  SAND. 

on  his  travels,  who  becomes  passionately  enam- 
ored of  her.  He  over-persuades  Lucrezia  into 
trusting  that  they  will  find  their  felicity  in  each 
other.  Their  happiness  is  of  the  briefest  dura- 
tion, owing  to  the  unreasonable  character  of  the 
prince,  who  leads  the  actress  a  miserable  life ; 
his  love  taking  the  form  of  petty  tyranny  and 
retrospective  jealousy.  After  long  years  of  this 
material  and  moral  captivity,  the  heroic  Lucre- 
zia fades  and  dies. 

Not  content  with  identifying  the  intolerable, 
though  it  must  be  owned  severely-tested,  Prince 
Karol  with  Chopin,  imaginative  writers  have 
gone  so  far  as  to  assert  that  the  book  was  con- 
ceived and  written  from  an  express  design  on 
the  novelist's  part  to  bring  about  the  breach  of 
a  link  she  was  beginning  to  find  irksome  ! 

Madame  Sand  has  described  how  it  was 
written  —  as  are  all  such  works  of  imagina- 
tion—  in  response  to  a  sort  of  "call" — some 
striking  yet  indefinable  quality  in  one  idea 
among  the  host  always  floating  through  the 
brain  of  the  artist,  that  makes  him  instantly 
seize  it  and  single  it  out  as  inviting  to  art-treat- 
ment. It  would  be  preposterous  to  doubt  her 
statement.  But  whether  the  inspiration  ought 
not  to  have  been  sacrificed  is  another  question. 
Her  gift  was  her  good  angel  and  her  evil  angel 
as  well,  but  in  any  case  something  of  her  despot. 


NOVELIST  AND  POLITICIAN          1 73 

Here,  assuredly,  it  ruled  her  ill.  It  is  indispu- 
table that,  as  she  had  pointed  out,  the  sad  his- 
tory of  the  attachment  of  Lucrezia  the  actress 
and  Karol  the  prince  deviates  too  widely  from 
that  which  was  supposed  to  have  originated  it 
for  just  comparisons  to  be  drawn  between  the 
two,  that  Karol  is  not  a  genius,  and  therefore 
has  none  of  the  rights  of  genius  —  including, 
we  presume,  the  right  to  be  a  torment  to  those 
around  him  —  that  to  talk  of  a  portrait  of  Chopin 
without  his  genius  is  a  contradiction  in  terms, 
that  he  never  suspected  the  likeness  assumed 
until  it  was  insinuated  to  him,  and  so  forth. 
But  there  remains  this,  that  in  the  work  of  imag- 
ination she  here  presented  to  the  public  there 
was  enough  of  reality  interwoven  to  make  the 
world  hasten  to  identify  or  confound  Prince  Karol 
with  Chopin.  This  might  have  been  a  foregone 
conclusion,  as  also  that  Chopin,  the  most  sensi- 
tive of  mortals,  would  be  infinitely  pained  by 
the  inferences  that  would  be  drawn.  Perhaps  if 
only  as  a  genius,  he  had  the  right  to  be  spared 
such  an  infliction ;  and  one  must  wish  it  could 
have  appeared  in  this  light  to  Madame  Sand. 
It  seems  as  though  it  were  impossible  for  the 
author  to  put  himself  at  the  point  of  view  of  the 
reader  in  such  matters.  The  divine  spark  itself, 
that  quickens  certain  faculties,  deadens  others. 
When  Goethe,  in  Werther,  dragged  the  private 


174  GEORGE  SAND. 

life  of  his  intimate  friends,  the  Kestners,  into 
publicity,  and  by  falsifying  the  character  of  the 
one  and  misrepresenting  the  conduct  of  the 
other,  in  obedience  to  the  requisitions  of  art, 
exposed  his  beloved  Charlotte  and  her  husband 
to  all  manner  of  annoyances,  it  never  seems  to 
have  entered  into  his  head  beforehand  but  that 
they  would  be  delighted  by  what  he  had  done. 
Nor  could  he  get  over  his  surprise  that  such 
petty  vexations  on  their  part  should  not  be 
merged  in  a  proud  satisfaction  at  the  literary 
memorial  thus  raised  by  him  to  their  friendly 
intercourse !  This  seems  incredible,  and  yet 
his  sincerity  leaves  no  room  for  doubt. 

Madame  Sand's  transgressions  on  this  head, 
though  few,  have  obtained  great  notoriety,  on 
account  of  the  extraordinary  celebrity  of  two  of 
the  personages  that  suggested  characters  she 
has  drawn.  To  the  supposed  originals,  however 
obscure,  the  mortification  is  the  same.  But 
what  often  passes  uncommented  on  when  the 
individuals  said  to  be  traduced  are  unknown  to 
fame,  sets  the  whole  world  talking  when  one  of 
the  first  musicians  or  poets  of  the  century  is 
involved  ;  so  that  Madame  Sand  has  incurred 
more  censure  than  other  novelists,  though  she 
has  deserved  it  more  rarely.  But  regret  re- 
mains that  for  the  sake  of  Lucrezia  Floriani, 
one  of  the  least  pleasant  though  by  no  means 


NOVELIST  AND  POLITICIAN.          1/5 

the  least  powerful  of  her  novels,  she  should 
have  exposed  herself  to  the  charge  of  unkind- 
ness  to  one  who  had  but  a  short  while  to  live. 

Other  causes  had  latterly  been  combining  to 
lead  to  differences  of  which  it  would  certainly 
be  unfair  to  lay  the  whole  blame  on  Madame 
Sand.  The  tie  of  personal  attachment  between 
Chopin  and  herself  was  not  associated  by  iden- 
tity of  outward  interests  or  even  of  cares  and 
family  affections,  such  as,  in  the  case  of  hus- 
band and  wife,  make  self-sacrifice  possible  under 
conditions  which  might  otherwise  be  felt  un- 
bearable, and  help  to  tide  over  crises  of  impa- 
tience or  wrong.  Madame  Sand's  children  were 
now  grown  up ;  cross-influences  could  not  but 
arise,  hard  to  conciliate.  Without  accrediting 
Chopin  with  the  self-absorption  of  Prince  Karol, 
it  is  easy  to  see  here,  in  a  situation  somewhat 
anomalous,  elements  of  probable  discord.  It 
was  impossible  that  he  should  any  longer  be  a 
first  consideration ;  impossible  that  he  should 
not  resent  it. 

For  some  years  his  state  of  health  had  been 
getting  worse  and  worse,  and  his  nervous  sus- 
ceptibilities correspondingly  intensified.  Mad- 
ame Sand  betrayed  some  impatience  at  last  of 
what  she  had  long  borne  uncomplainingly,  and 
their  good  understanding  was  broken.  As 
was  natural,  the  breach  was  the  more  severely 


176  GEORGE    SAND. 

felt  by  Chopin,  but  that  it  was  of  an  irreparable 
nature,  one  is  at  liberty  to  doubt.  He  bitterly 
regretted  what  he  had  lost,  for  which  not  all  the 
attentions  showered  on  him  by  his  well-wishers 
could  afford  compensation,  as  his  letters  attest. 

But  outward  circumstances  prolonged  the 
estrangement  till  it  was  too  late.  They  met 
but  once  after  the  quarrel,  and  that  was  in 
company  m  March,  1848.  Madame  Sand  would 
at  once  have  made  some  approach,  but  Cho- 
pin did  not  then  respond  to  the  appeal ;  and 
the  reconciliation  both  perhaps  desired  was 
never  to  take  place.  Political  events  had  inter- 
vened to  widen  the  gap  between  their  paths. 
Chopin  had  neither  part  nor  lot  in  the  revolu- 
tionary movement  that  just  then  was  throwing 
all  minds  and  lives  into  a  ferment,  and  which 
was  completely  to  engross  Madame  Sand's 
energies  for  many  months  to  come.  It  drove 
him  away  to  England,  and  he  only  returned  to 
Paris,  in  1849,  to  die. 

In  May,  1847, tne  tranquility  of  life  at  Nohant 
had  been  varied  by  a  family  event,  the  marriage 
of  Madame  Sand's  daughter  Solange  with  the 
sculptor  C16singer.  The  remainder  of  the 
twelvemonth  was  spent  in  the  country,  appar- 
ently with  very  little  anticipation  on  Madame 
Sand's  part  that  the  breaking  of  the  political 
storm,  that  was  to  draw  her  into  its  midst,  was 
so  near. 


NOVELIST  AND  POLITICIAN.         1 77 

The  new  year  was  to  be  one  of  serious  agita- 
tions, different  to  any  that  had  yet  entered  into 
her  experience.  Political  enterprise  for  the 
time  cast  all  purely  personal  interests  and  emo- 
tions into  the  background.  "  I  have  never 
known  how  to  do  anything  by  halves,"  she  says 
of  herself  very  truly;  and  whatever  may  be- 
thought of  the  tendency  of  her  political  influ- 
ence and  the  manner  of  its  exertion,  no  one  can 
tax  her  with  sparing  herself  in  a  contest  to 
which,  moreover,  she  came  disinterested  ;  vanity 
and  ambition  having,  in  one  of  her  sex,  nothing 
to  gain  by  it.  But  in  political  matters  it  seems 
hard  for  a  poet  to  do  right.  If,  like  Goethe,  he 
holds  aloof  in  great  crises,  he  is  branded  for  it 
as  a  traitor  and  a  bad  patriot.  The  battle  of 
Leipzig  is  being  fought,  and  he  sits  tranquilly 
writing  the  epilogue  for  a  play.  If,  like  George 
Sand,  he  throws  the  whole  weight  of  his  enthu- 
siastic eloquence  into  what  he  believes  to  be 
the  right  scale,  it  is  ten  to  one  that  his  power, 
which  knows  nothing  of  caution  and  patience, 
may  do  harm  to  the  cause  he  has  at  heart. 

Madame  Sand  rested  her  hopes  for  a  better 
state  of  things,  for  the  redemption  of  France 
from  political  corruption,  for  the  amelioration 
of  the  condition  of  the  working  classes,  and 
reform  of  social  institutions  in  general,  on  the 
advent  to  power  of  those  placed  at  the  head  of 


1 78  GEORGE  SAND. 

affairs  by  the  collapse  of  the  government  of 
Louis  Philippe,  a  crisis  long  threatened,  long 
prepared,  and  become  inevitable. 

"The  whole  system,"  wrote  Heine  prophetic- 
ally of  the  existing  monarchy,  five  years  before 
its  fall,  "is  not  worth  a  charge  of  powder,  if 
indeed  some  day  a  charge  of  powder  does  not 
blow  it  up."  February,  1848,  saw  the  explosion, 
the  flight  of  the  Royal  Family,  and  the  forma- 
tion of  a  Provisional  Government,  with  Lamar- 
tine  at  its  head. 

It  is  hard  to  realize  in  the  present  day,  when 
we  contemplate  these  events  through  the  sober- 
ing light  of  the  deplorable  sequel,  how  immense 
and  wide-spreading  was  the  enthusiasm  that  at 
this  particular  juncture  seemed  to  put  the  fer- 
vent soul  of  a  George  Sand  or  an  Armand 
Barbes  into  the  most  lukewarm  and  timid. 
"  More  than  one,"  writes  Madame  d'Agoult, 
"who  for  the  last  twenty  years  had  been  scoffing 
at  every  grand  thought,  let  himself  be  won  by 
the  general  emotion."  The  prevailing  impres- 
sion can  have  fallen  little  short  of  the  convic- 
tion that  a  sort  of  millennium  was  at  hand  for 
mankind  in  general  and  the  French  in  particu- 
lar, and  that  all  human  ills  would  disappear 
because  a  bad  government  had  been  got  rid  of, 
and  that  without  such  scenes  of  blood  and  strife 
as  had  disfigured  previous  revolutions. 


NOVELIST  AND  POLITICIAN.          1 79 

The  first  task  was  firmly  to  establish  a  better 
one  in  its  place.  Madame  Sand,  though  with 
a  strong  perception  of  the  terrible  difficulties 
besetting  a  ministry  which,  to  quote  her  own 
words,  would  need,  in  order  to  acquit  itself  suc- 
cessfully, "the  genius  of  a  Napoleon  and  the 
heart  of  Christ,"  never  relaxed  an  instant  in  the 
enforcement,  both  by  example  and  exhortation, 
of  her  conviction  that  it  was  the  duty  of  all  true 
patriots  and  philanthropists  to  consecrate  their 
energies  to  the  cause  of  the  new  republic. 

"  My  heart  is  full  and  my  head  on  fire,"  she 
writes  to  a  fellow-worker  in  the  same  cause. 
"  All  my  physical  ailments,  all  my  personal  sor- 
rows are  forgotten.  I  live,  I  am  strong,  active, 
I  am  not  more  than  twenty  years  old."  The 
exceptional  situation  of  the  country  was  one  in 
which,  according  to  her  opinion,  it  behooved  men 
to  be  ready  not  only  with  loyalty  and  devotion, 
but  with  fanaticism  if  needed.  She  worked 
hard  with  her  son  and  her  local  allies  at  the 
ungrateful  task  of  revolutionizing  Le  Berry, 
which,  she  sighs,  "is  very  drowsy."  In  March 
she  came  up  to  Paris  and  placed  her  services  as 
journalist  and  partizan  generally  at  the  disposal 
of  Ledru-Rollin,  Minister  of  the  Interior  under 
the  new  Government.  "  Here  am  I  already 
doing  the  work  of  a  statesman,"  she  writes  from 
Paris  to  her  son  at  Nohant,  March  24.  Her 


180  GEORGE    SAND. 

indefatigable  energy,  enabling  her  as  it  did  to 
disdain  repose,  was  perhaps  the  object  of  envy- 
to  the  statesmen  themselves.  At  their  disgust 
when  kept  up  all  night  by  the  official  duties  of 
their  posts,  she  laughs  without  mercy.  Night 
and  day  her  pen  was  occupied,  now  drawing  up 
circulars  for  the  administration,  now  lecturing 
the  people  in  political  pamphlets  addressed  to 
them.  To  the  Bulletin  de  la  Rfyubliqnc,  a 
government  journal  started  with  the  laudable 
purpose  of  preserving  a  clear  understanding 
between  the  mass  of  the  people  in  the  provinces 
and  the  central  government,  she  became  a  lead- 
ing contributor.  For  the  festal  invitation  per- 
formances given  to  the  people  at  the  "Theatre 
de  la  Republique,"  where  Rachel  sang  the  Mar- 
seillaise and  acted  in  Les  Horaces,  Madame  Sand 
wrote  a  little  "occasional"  prologue,  Le  Rot  At- 
tend, a  new  and  democratic  version  of  Moliere's 
Impromptu  de  Versailles.  The  outline  is  as  fol- 
lows : —  Moliere  is  discovered  impatient  and 
uneasy  ;  the  King  waits,  and  the  comedians 
are  not  ready.  He  sinks  asleep,  and  has  a 
vision,  in  which  the  muse  emerges  out  of  a 
cloud,  escorted  by  ^Eschylus,  Sophocles,  Eurip- 
ides, Shakespeare,  and  Beaumarchais,  to  each 
of  whom  are  assigned  a  few  lines  —  where  pos- 
sible, lines  of  their  own  — in  praise  of  equality 
and  fraternity.  They  vanish,  and  Moliere 


NOVELIST  AND  POLITICIAN.          l8l 

awakes ;  his  servant  announces  to  him  that  the 
King  waits  —  but  the  King  this  time  is,  of 
course,  the  people,  to  whom  Moliere  now 
addresses  his  flattering  speech  in  turn. 

But  the  fervor  of  heroism  that  fired  every- 
body in  the  first  days  of  successful  revolution, 
that  made  the  leaders  disinterested,  the  masses 
well-behaved,  reasonable,  and  manageable,  was 
for  the  majority  a  flash  only ;  and  the  dreamed-of 
social  ideal,  touched  for  a  moment  was  to 
recede  again  into  the  far  distance.  It  was 
Madame  Sand's  error,  and  no  ignoble  one,  to 
entertain  the  belief  that  a  nation  could  safely  be 
trusted  to  the  guidance  of  a  force  so  variable 
and  uncontrollable  as  enthusiasm,  and  that  the 
principle  of  self-devotion  could  be  relied  upon 
as  a  motive  power.  The  divisions,  intrigues, 
and  fatal  complications  that  quickly  arose  at 
head-quarters  confirmed  her  first  estimation  of 
the  practical  dangers  ahead.  She  clung  to  her 
belief  in  the  sublime  virtues  of  the  masses,  and 
that  they  would  prove  themselves  grander, 
finer,  more  generous  than  all  the  mighty  and 
the  learned  ones  upon  earth.  But  each  of  the 
popular  leaders  in  turn  was  pronounced  by  her 
tried  and  found  wanting.  None  of  the  party 
chiefs  presented  the  desirable  combination  of 
perfect  heroism  and  political  genius.  Michel, 
the  apostle  who  of  old  had  converted  her  to 


1 82  GEORGE  SAND. 

the  cause,  she  had  long  scorned  as  a  deserter. 
Leroux,  in  the  moment  of  action,  was  a  non- 
entity. Barbes  "  reasons  like  a  saint,"  she 
observes,  "  that  is  to  say,  very  ill  as  regards  the 
things  of  this  world."  Lamartine  was  a  vain 
trimmer ;  Louis  Blanc,  a  sectarian  ;  Ledru- 
Rollin,  a  weathercock.  "  It  is  the  characters 
that  transgress,"  she  complains  naifvely  as  one 
after  tHe  other  disappointed  her.  Her  own 
shortcomings  on  the  score  of  patience  and  pru- 
dence were,  it  must  be  owned,  no  less  grave. 
Her  clear-sightedness  was  unaccompanied  by  the 
slightest  dexterity  of  action.  Years  before,  in 
one  of  the  Lettres  d'tm  Voyageur,  she  had  passed 
a  criticism  on  herself  as  a  political  worker,  the 
accuracy  of  which  she  made  proof  of  when 
carried  into  the  vortex.  "  I  am  by  nature 
poetical,  but  not  legislative,  warlike,  if  required, 
but  never  parliamentary.  By  first  persuading 
me  and  then  giving  me  my  orders  some  use 
may  be  made  of  me,  but  I  am  not  fit  for  discov- 
ering or  deciding  anything." 

Such  an  influence,  important  for  raising  an 
agitation,  was  null  for  controlling  and  directing 
the  forces  thus  set  in  motion.  In  the  applica- 
tion of  the  theories  she  had  accepted  she  was 
as  weak  and  obscure  as  she  was  emphatic  and 
eloquent  in  the  preaching  of  them.  Little  help 
could  she  afford  the  republican  leaders  in  deal- 


NOVELIST  AND  POLITICIAN.         183 

ing  with  the  momentous  question  how  to  fulfill 
the  immense  but  confused  aspirations  they  had 
raised,  how  to  show  that  their  principles  could 
answer  the  necessities  of  the  moment. 

The  worst,  perhaps,  that  can  be  said  of 
Madame  Sand's  political  utterances  is  that  they 
encouraged  the  people  in  their  false  belief  — 
which  belief  she  shared  —  that  the  social 
reforms  so  urgently  needed  could  be  worked 
rapidly  by  the  Government,  providing  only  it 
were  willing.  Over-boldness  of  expression  on 
the  part  of  advanced  sections  only  increased  the 
timidity  and  irresolution  of  action  complained 
of  in  the  administration.  As  the  ranks  of  the 
Ministry  split  up  into  factions,  Madame  Sand 
attached  herself  to  the  party  of  Ledru-Rollin  — 
in  whom  at  that  time  she  had  confidence, —  a 
party  that  desired  to  see  him  at  the  head  of 
affairs,  and  that  included  Jules  Favre,  Etienne 
Arago,  and  Armand  Barbes.  No  more  zealous 
political  partizan  and  agent  than  Madame  Sand. 
The  purpose  in  view  was  to  preserve  a  cordial 
entente  between  these  trusted  chiefs  and  the 
masses  whose  interests  they  represented  and 
on  whose  support  they  relied.  To  this  end  she 
got  together  meetings  of  working-men  at  her 
temporary  Parisian  abode,  addressing  them  in 
speech  and  in  print,  and  seemingly  blind  in  the 
heat  of  the  struggle  to  the  enormous  danger  of 


1 84  GEORGE    SAND. 

playing  with  the  unmanageable,  unreasoning 
instincts  of  the  crowd.  She  still  cherished  the 
chimera  dear  to  her  imagination  — the  prospec- 
tive vision  of  the  French  people  assembling 
itself  in  large  masses,  and  deliberately  and 
pacifically  giving  expression  to  its  wishes. 

Into  the  Bulletin  de  la  Rfyublique  there 
crept  soon  a  tone  of  impatience  and  provocation, 
improper  and  dangerous  in  an  official  organ. 
The  1 6th  number,  which  appeared  on  April  16, 
at  a  moment  when  the  pending  general  elec- 
tions seemed  likely  to  be  overruled  by  reaction- 
aries, contained  the  startling  declaration  that  if 
the  result  should  thus  dissatisfy  the  Paris  peo- 
ple, these  would  manifest  their  will  once  more, 
by  adjourning  the  decision  of  a  false  national 
representation. 

This  sentence,  which  came  from  the  pen  of 
Madame  Sand,  was  interpreted  into  a  threat  of 
intimidation  from  the  party  that  would  make 
Ledru-Rollin  dictator,  and  created  a  consider- 
able stir.  There  was,  indeed,  no  call  for  a  fresh 
brand  of  discord  in  the  republican  ranks. 
Almost  simultaneously  came  popular  demon- 
strations of  a  menacing  character.  Ledru- 
Rollin  disavowed  the  offending  Bulletin;  but 
the  growing  uneasiness  of  the  bourgeoisie,  the 
unruly  discontent  among  the  workmen,  the 
Government,  embarrassed  and  utterly  disorgan- 


NOVELIST  AND  POLITICIAN.         185 

ized,  was  powerless  to  allay.  Madame  Sand 
began  to  perceive  that  the  republic  of  her  dreams, 
the  "republican  republic,"  was  a  forlorn  hope, 
though  still  unconscious  that  even  heavier 
obstacles  to  progress  existed  in  the  governed 
many  than  in  the  incapacity  or  personal  ambi- 
tion of  the  governing  few.  She  writes  to  her 
son  from  Paris,  April  17  :  — 

I  am  sad,  my  boy.  If  this  goes  on,  and  in  some  sense 
there  should  be  no  more  to  be  done,  I  shall  return  to 
Nohant  to  console  myself  by  being  with  you.  I  shall 
stay  and  see  the  National  Assembly,  after  which  I  think 
I  shall  find  nothing  more  here  that  I  can  do. 

At  the  Fete  de  la  Fraternity  April  2Oth,  the 
spectacle  of  a  million  of  souls  putting  aside  and 
agreeing  to  forget  all  dissensions,  all  wrongs  in 
the  past  and  fears  for  the  future,  and  uniting  in 
a  burst  of  joyous  exultation,  filled -her  with  enthu- 
siasm and  renewed  hope.  But  the  demonstration 
of  the  1 5th  of  May,  of  which  she  was  next  a  spec- 
tator, besides  its  mischievous  effect  in  alarming 
the  quiet  classes  and  exciting  the  agitators 
afresh,  gave  fatal  evidence  of  the  national 
disorganization  and  uncontrollable  confusion 
everywhere  prevailing,  that  had  doomed  the 
republic  from  the  hour  of  its  birth. 

Madame  Sand,  though  she  strenuously  denied 
any  participation  or  sympathy  with  this  particu- 


1 86  GEORGE  SAND, 

lar  manifestation,  was  closely  associated  in  the 
public  mind  with  those  who  had  aided  and 
abetted  the  uprising.  During  the  gathering  of 
the  populace,  which  she  had  witnessed,  mingling 
unrecognized  among  the  crowd,  a  female  orator 
haranguing  the  mob  from  the  lower  windows  of 
a  caft  was  pointed  out  to  her,  and  she  was 
assured  that  it  was  George  Sand.  During  the 
repressive  measures  the  administration  was  led 
to  take  she  felt  uncertain  whether  the  arrest  of 
Barbes  might  not  be  followed  by  her  own. 
Some  of  her  friends  advised  her  to  seek  safety 
in  Italy,  where  at  that  time  the  partisans  of 
liberty  were  more  united  and  sanguine.  She 
turned  a  deaf  ear.  But  she  was  severed  now 
from  all  influential  connection  with  those  in 
authority.  Before  the  end  of  May  she  left  for 
Nohant,  with  her  hopes  for  the  rapid  regenera- 
tion of  her  country  on  the  wane.  "  I  am  afraid 
for  the  future,"  she  writes  to  the  imprisoned 
Barbes,  shortly  after  these  events.  "  I  surfer 
for  those  who  do  harm  and  allow  harm  to 
be  done  without  understanding  it.  ...  I  see 
nothing  but  ignorance  and  moral  weakness  pre- 
ponderating on  the  face  of  the  globe." 

Through  the  medium  of  the  press,  notably  of 
the  journal  La  Vraie  Rfyubliquc,  she  continued 
to  give  plain  expression  to  her  sentiments, 
regardless  of  the  political  enmities  she  might 


NOVELIST  AND  POLITICIAN.          1 87 

excite,  and  of  the  personal  mortification  to  which 
she  was  exposed,  even  at  Nohant,  which  with 
its  inmates  had  recently  become  the  mark  for 
petty  hostile  "demonstrations."  Alluding  to 
these,  she  writes  :  — 

Here  in  this  Berry,  so  romantic,  so  gentle,  so  calm  and 
good,  in  this  land  I  love  so  tenderly,  and  where  I  have 
given  sufficient  proof  to  the  poor  and  uneducated  that  I 
know  my  duties  towards  them,  I  myself  in  particular  am 
looked  upon  as  the  enemy  of  the  human  race  ;  and  if  the 
Republic  has  not  kept  its  promises,  it  is  I,  clearly,  who 
am  the  cause. 

The  term  "  communist,"  caught  up  and  passed 
from  mouth  to  mouth,  was  flung  at  Madame 
Sand  and  her  son  by  the  peasants,  whose  ideas 
as  to  its  significance  were  not  a  little  wild.  "A 
pack  of  idiots,"  she  writes  to  Madame  Marliani, 
"who  threaten  to  come  and  set  fire  to  Nohant. 
Brave  they  are  not,  neither  morally  nor  physi- 
cally ;  and  when  they  come  this  way  and  I  walk 
through  the  midst  of  them  they  take  off  their 
hats  ;  but  when  they  have  gon-e  by  they  sum- 
mon courage  to  shout,  '  Down  with  the  commu- 
nists.' " 

The  ingratitude  of  many  who  again  and  again 
had  received  succor  from  her  and  hers,  she 
might  excuse  on  account  of  their  ignorance,  but 
the  extent  of  their  ignorance  was  an  obstacle  to 


1 88  GEORGE    SAND. 

immediate  progress  whose  weight  she  had  mis- 
calculated. 

"  I  shall  keep  my  faith,"  she  writes  to  Joseph 
Mazzini  at  this  crisis  —  "  the  idea,  pure  and 
bright,  the  eternal  truth  will  ever  remain  for  me 
in  my  heaven,  unless  I  go  blind.  But  hope  is  a 
belief  in  the  near  triumph  of  one's  faith.  I 
should  not  be  sincere  if  I  said  that  this  state  of 
mind  had  not  been  modified  in  me  during  these 
last  months." 

The  terrible  insurrection  of  June  followed, 
and  overwhelmed  her  for  the  time.  It  was  not 
only  that  her  nature,  womanly  and  poetical,  had 
the  greatest  horror  of  bloodshed.  The  spec- 
tacle of  the  republicans  slaughtering  each  other, 
of  the  evil  passions  stirred,  the  frightful  anarchy, 
ended  but  at  a  frightful  cost,  the  complete  ex- 
tinction of  all  hopes,  —  nothing  left  rampant 
but  fear,  rancor  and  distrust,  —  was  heart- 
rendering  to  her  whose  heart  had  been  thrown 
into  the  national  troubles.  Great  was  the  panic 
in  Berry,  an  after-clap  of  the  disturbances  in  the 
capital.  Madame  Sand's  position  became  ^more 
unpleasant  than  ever.  She  describes  herself  as 
"  blaste  d outrages  —  threatened  perpetually  by 
the  coward  hatreds  and  imbecile  terrors  of 
country  places."  But  to  all  this  she  was  well- 
nigh  insensible  in  her  despair  over  the  public 
calamities  oppressing  her  nation  —  the  end  of 


NOVELIST  AND  POLITICIAN.         189 

all  long-struggling  aspirations  in  "  frightful  con- 
fusion, complete  moral  anarchy,  a  morbid  con- 
dition, in  most  which  the  courageous  of  us  lost 
heart  and  wished  for  death. 

"  You  say  that  the  bourgeoisie  prevails,"  she 
writes  to  Mazzini,  in  September,  1848,  "and 
that  thus  it  is  quite  natural  that  selfishness 
should  be  the  order  of  the  day.  But  why  does 
the  bourgeoisie  prevail,  whilst  the  people  is 
sovereign,  and  the  principle  of  its  sovereignty, 
universal  suffrage,  is  still  standing  ?  We  must 
open  our  eyes  at  last,  and  the  vision  of  reality 
is  horrible.  The  majority  of  the  French  people 
is  blind,  credulous,  ignorant,  ungrateful,  wicked, 
and  stupid  ;  it  is  bourgeoisie  itself  !  " 

Under  no  conceivable  circumstances  is  it 
likely  that  Madame  Sand  would  not  very  soon 
have  become  disgusted  with  active  politics,  for 
which  her  temperament  unfitted  her  in  every 
respect.  Impetuous  and  uncompromisingly 
sincere,  she  was  predestined  to  burn  her  fingers ; 
proud  and  independent,  to  become  something  of 
a  scape-goat,  charged  with  all  the  follies  and 
errors  which  she  repudiated,  as  well  as  with 
those  for  which  she  was  more  or  less  directly 
responsible. 

For  some  time  to  come  she  remained  in  com- 
parative seclusion  at  Nohant.  She  had  not 
ceased  her  propaganda,  though  obliged  to  con- 


190  GEORGE    SAND. 

duct  it  with  greater  circumspection.  After  the 
horrors  of  civil  warfare,  had  come  the  cry  for 
order  at  any  price,  and  France  had  declared  for 
the  rule  of  Louis  Bonaparte.  During  the  course 
of  events  that  consolidated  his  power,  Madame 
Sand  withdrew  more  and  more  from  the  strife 
of  political  parties.  She  had  been,  and  we  shall 
find  her  again,  inclined  to  hope  for  better  things 
for  France  from  its  new  master  than  time 
showed  to  be  in  store.  Other  republicans 
besides  herself  had  been  disposed  to  build  high 
their  hopes  of  this  future  "  saviour  of  society  " 
in  his  youthful  days  of  adversity  and  mysterious 
obscurity.  When  in  confinement  at  the  fortress 
of  Ham,  in  1844,  Louis  Napoleon  sent  to  George 
Sand  his  work  on  the  Extinction  of  Pauperism. 
She  wrote  back  a  flattering  letter  in  which, 
however,  with  characteristic  sincerity,  she  is 
careful  to  remind  him  that  the  party  to  which 
she  belonged  could  never  acknowledge  any 
sovereign  but  the  people  ;  that  this  they  con- 
sidered to  be  incompatible  with  the  sovereignty 
of  one  man  ;  that  no  miracle,  no  personification 
of  popular  genius  in  a  single  individual,  could 
prove  to  them  the  right  of  that  individual  to 
sovereign  power. 

Since  then  she  had  seen  the  people  supreme, 
and  been  forced  to  own  that  they  knew  not 
what  they  wanted,  nor  whither  they  were  going, 


NOVELIST  AND  POLITICIAN,         igi 

divided  in  mind,  ferocious  in  action.  Among 
the  leaders,  she  had  seen  some  infatuated  by 
the  allurements  of  personal  popularity,  and  the 
rest  showing,  by  their  inability  to  cope  with 
the  perplexities  of  administrative  government, 
that  so  far  philosophical  speculations  were  of  no 
avail  in  the  actual  solution  of  social  problems. 
The  result  of  her  disenchantment  was  in  no 
degree  the  overthrow  of  her  political  faith.  A 
conviction  was  dawning  on  her  that  her  social 
ideal  was  absolutely  impracticable  in  any  future 
that  she  and  her  friends  could  hope  to  live  to 
see.  But  the  belief  on  which  she  founded  her 
social  religion  was  one  in  which  she  never 
wavered  ;  a  certainty  that  a  progress,  the  very 
idea  of  which  now  seemed  chimerical,  would 
some  day  appear  to  all  as  a  natural  thing ;  nay, 
that  the  stream  of  tendency  would  carry  men 
towards  this  goal  in  spite  of  themselves. 


CHAPTER    IX. 

PASTORAL  TALES. 

"So  you  thought,"  wrote  Madame  Sand  to  a 
political  friend,  in  1849,  "that  I  was  drinking 
blood  out  of  the  skulls  of  aristocrats.  Not  I ! 
I  am  reading  Virgil  and  learning  Latin."  And 
her  best  propaganda,  as  by  and  by  she  came  to 
own,  was  not  that  carried  on  in  journals  such 
as  La  Vraie  Rfyublique  and  La  Cause  du  Peuple. 
Through  her  works  of  imagination  she  has  ex- 
ercised an  influence  more  powerful  and  uni- 
versal, if  indirect. 

Among  the  more  than  half  a  hundred 
romances  of  George  Sand,  there  stands  out  a 
little  group  of  three,  belonging  to  the  period 
we  have  now  reached — the  mezzo  cammin  of 
her  life  —  creations  in  a  special  style,  and  over 
which  the  public  voice,  whether  of  fastidious 
critics  or  general  readers,  in  France  or  abroad, 
has  been  and  remains  unanimous  in  praise. 

In  these,  her  pastoral  tales,  she  hit  on  a  new 
and  happy  vein  which  she  was  peculiarly  quali- 
fied to  work,  combining  as  she  did,  intimate 


PASTORAL    TALES.  193 

knowledge  of  French  peasant  life  with  sym- 
pathetic interest  in  her  subject  and  lively  p6etic 
fancy.  Here  she  affronts  no  prejudices,  advances 
no  startling  theories,  handles  no  subtle,  treach- 
erous social  questions,  and  to  these  composi- 
tions in  a  perfectly  original  genre  she  brought 
the  freshness  of  genius  which  "  age  cannot 
wither,"  together  with  the  strength  and  finish 
of  a  practiced  hand. 

Peasants  had  figured  as  accessories  in  her 
earlier  works.  The  rustic  hermit  and  philoso- 
pher, Patience,  and  Marcasse  the  rat-catcher, 
in  Mauprat,  are  note-worthy  examples.  In 
1 844  had  appeared  Jeanne,  with  its  graceful 
dedication  to  Franchise  Meillant,  the  unlettered 
peasant-girl  who  may  have  suggested  the  work 
she  could  not  read — one  of  a  family  of  rural 
proprietors,  spoken  of  by  Madame  Sand  in  a 
letter  of  1843  as  a  fine  survival  of  a  type  already 
then  fast  vanishing  —  of  patriarchally  con- 
stituted family-life,  embodying  all  that  was 
grand  and  simple  in  the  forms  of  the  olden 
time. 

In  Jeanne,  Madame  Sand  had  first  ventured 
to  make  a  peasant-girl  the  central  figure  of  her 
novel,  though  still  so  far  deferring  to  the 
received  notions  of  what  was  essential  in  order 
to  interest  the  "  gentle  "  reader  as  to  surround 
her  simple  heroine  with  personages  of  rank  and 
7 


194  GEORGE    SAND. 

education.  Jeanne  herself,  moreover,  is  an  ex- 
ceptional and  a  highly  idealized  type  —  as  it  were 
a  sister  to  Joan  of  Arc,  not  the  inspired  warrior- 
maid,  but  the  visionary  shepherdess  of  the 
Vosges.  Yet  the  creation  is  sufficiently  real. 
The  author  had  observed  how  favorable  was  the 
life  of  solitude  and  constant  communion  with 
nature  led  by  many  of  these  country  children  in 
their  scattered  homesteads,  to  the  development 
of  remarkable  and  tenacious  individuality.  So 
with  the  strange  and  poetical  Jeanne,  too  innately 
refined  to  prosper  in  her  rough  human  environ- 
ment, yet  too  fixedly  simple  to  fare  much  better 
in  more  cultivated  circles.  She  is  the  victim  of 
a  sort  of  celestial  stupidity  we  admire  and  pity 
at  once.  In  this  study  of  a  peasant  heroine 
resides  such  charm  as  the  book  possesses,  and 
the  attempt  was  to  lead  on  the  author  to  the 
productions  above  alluded  to,  La  Mareau  Dia- 
ble,  Francois  le  Champi,  and  La  Petite  Fadette. 
Of  this  popular  trio  the  first  had  been  published 
already  two  years  before  the  Revolution,  in 
1846  ;  the  second  was  appearing  in  the  Feuille- 
ton  of  the  Journal  dcs  Debats  at  the  very  mo- 
ment of  the  breaking  of  the  storm,  which 
interrupted  its  publication  awhile.  When  those 
tumultuous  months  were  over,  and  Madame 
Sand,  thrown  out  of  the  hurly-burly  of  active 
politics,  was  brought  back  by  the  course  of 


PASTORAL    TALES.  195 

events  to  Nohant,  she  seems  to  have  taken  up 
her  pen  very  much  where  she  had  laid  it  down. 
The  break  in  her  ordinary  round  of  work  made 
by  the  excitements  of  active  statesmanship  was 
hardly  perceptible,  and  in  1849  Le  Champi  was 
followed  by  La  Petite  Fadette. 

La  Mare  an  Diable,  George  Sand's  first  tale  of 
exclusively  peasant-life,  is  usually  considered  her 
masterpiece  in  this  genre.  It  was  suggested  to 
her,  she  tells  us,  by  Holbein's  dismal  engraving 
of  death  coming  to  the  husbandman,  an  old, 
gaunt,  ragged,  over-worked  representative  of  his 
tribe  —  grim  ending  to  a  life  of  cheerless  poverty 
and  toil ! 

Here  was  the  dark  and  painful  side  of  the 
laborer's  existence  —  a  true  picture,  but  not  the 
whole  truth.  There  was  another  and  a  bright 
side,  which  might  just  as  allowably  be  repre- 
sented in  art  as  the  dreary  one,  and  which  she 
had  seen  and  studied.  In  Berry  extreme  pov- 
erty was  the  exception,  and  the  agriculturist's 
life  appeared  as  it  ought  to  be,  healthy,  calm, 
and  simple,  its  laboriousness  compensated  by 
the  soothing  influences  of  nature,  and  of  strong 
home  affections. 

This  little  gem  of  a  work  is  thoroughly  well- 
known.  The  ploughing-scene  in  the  opening  — 
ploughing  as  she  had  witnessed  it  sometimes  in 
her  own  neighborhood,  fresh,  rough  ground 


196  GEORGE  SAND. 

broken  up  for  tillage,  the  plough  drawn  by  four 
yoke  of  young  white  oxen  new  to  their  work 
and  but  half-tamed,  has  a  simplicity  and 
grandeur  of  effect  not  easy  to  parallel  in  modern 
art.  The  motif  of  the  tale  is  that  you  often  go 
far  to  search  for  the  good  fortune  that  lies  close 
to  your  door.  Never  was  so  homely  an  adage 
more  freshly  and  prettily  illustrated ;  yet  how 
slight  are  the  materials,  how  plain  is  the  out- 
line !  Germain,  the  well-to-do,  widowed  laborer, 
in  the  course  of  a  few  miles'  ride,  a  journey 
undertaken  in  order  to  present  himself  and  his 
addresses  to  the  rich  widow  his  father  desires 
him  to  woo,  discovers  the  real  life-companion 
he  wants  in  the  poor  girl-neighbor,  whom  he 
patronizingly  escorts  on  her  way  to  the  farm 
where  she  is  hired  for  service.  It  all  slowly 
dawns  upon  him,  in  the  most  natural  manner, 
as  the  least  incidents  of  the  journey  call  out  her 
good  qualities  of  head  and  heart  —  her  helpful- 
ness in  misadventure,  forgetfulness  of  self, 
unaffected  fondness  for  children,  instinctively 
recognized  by  Germain's  little  boy,  who,  with 
his  unconscious  childish  influence,  is  one  of  the 
prettiest  features  in  the  book.  Germain,  by  his 
journey's  end,  has  his  heart  so  well  engaged  in 
the  right  quarter  that  he  is  proof  against  the 
dangerous  fascinations  of  the  coquettish  widow. 
There  is  a  breath  of  poetry  over  the  picture, 


PASTORAL    TALES.  197 

but  no  denaturalization  of  the  uncultured  types. 
Germain  is  honest  and  warm-hearted,  but  not 
bright  of  understanding  ;  little  Marie  is  wise 
and  affectionate,  but  as  unsentimentally-minded 
as  the  veriest  realist  could  desire.  The  native 
caution  and  mercenary  habit  of  thought  of  the 
French  agricultural  class  are  indicated  by  many 
a  humorous  touch  in  the  pastorals  of  George 
Sand. 

Equally  pleasing,  though  not  aiming  at  the 
almost  antique  simplicity  of  the  Mare  au  Diable, 
is  the  story  of  Francois  le  Champi,  the  foundling, 
saved  from  the  demoralization  to  which  lack  of 
the  softening  influences  of  home  and  parental 
affection  predestine  such  unhappy  children, 
through  the  tenderness  his  forlorn  condition 
inspires  in  a  single  heart  —  that  of  Madeline 
Blanchet,  the  childless  wife,  whose  own  wrongs, 
patiently  borne,  have  quickened  her  commiserar 
tion  for  the  wrongs  of  others.  Her  sympathy, 
little  though  it  lies  in  her  power  to  manifest  it, 
he  feels,  and  its  incalculable  worth  to  him, 
which  is  such  that  the  gratitude  of  a  whole  life 
cannot  do  more  than  repay  it. 

Part  of  the  narrative  is  here  put  into  the 
mouth  of  a  peasant,  and  told  in  peasant  lan- 
guage, or  something  approaching  to  it.  Over 
the  propriety  of  this  proceeding,  adopted  also  in 
Les  Maitres  Sonneurs,  French  critics  are  dis- 


198  GEORGE  SAND. 

agreed,  though  for  the  most  part  they  regret  it. 
It  is  not  for  a  foreigner  to  decide  between 
them.  One  would  certainly  regret  the  absence 
of  some  of  the  extremely  original  and  express- 
ive words  and  turns  of  speech  current  among 
the  rural  population,  forms  which  such  a  method 
enabled  her  to  introduce  into  the  narrative  as 
well  as  into  the  dialogue. 

La  Petite  Fadette  is  not  only  worthy  of  its 
predecessors  but  by  many  will  be  preferred  to 
either.  There  is  something  particularly  attrac- 
tive in  the  portraits  of  the  twin  brothers  — 
partly  estranged  by  character,  wholly  united  by 
affection,  —  and  in  the  figure  of  Fanchon  Fadet, 
an  original  in  humble  life,  which  has  made  this 
little  work  a  general  favorite  wherever  it  is 
known. 

These  prose-idylls  have  been  called  "  The 
Georgics  of  France."  It  is  curious  that  in  a 
country  so  largely  agricultural,  and  where 
nature  presents  more  variety  of  picturesque 
aspect  than  perhaps  in  any  other  in  Europe, 
the  poetic  side  of  rural  life  should  have  been 
so  sparingly  represented  in  her  imaginative 
literature.  French  poets  of  nature  have  mostly 
sought  their  inspiration  out  of  their  own  land, 
"  In  France,  especially,"  observes  Theophile 
Gautier,  "  all  literary  people  live  in  town,  that 
is  in  Paris  the  centre,  know  little  of  what  is 


PASTORAL    TALES.  199 

unconnected  with  it,  and  most  of  them  cannot 
tell  wheat  from  barley,  potatoes  from  beet- 
root." It  was  a  happy  inspiration  that 
prompted  Madame  Sand  to  fill  in  the  blank,  in 
a  way  all  her  own,  and  her  task  as  we  have  seen 
was  completed,  revolutions  notwithstanding. 
She  owns  to  having  then  felt  the  attraction 
experienced  in  all  time  by  those  hard  hit  by 
public  calamities,  "to  throw  themselves  back 
on  pastoral  dreams,  all  the  more  na'fve  and 
childlike  for  the  brutality  and  darkness  tri- 
umphant in  the  world  of  activity."  Tired  of 
"turning  round  and  round  in  a  false  circle  of 
argument,  of  accusing  the  governing  minority, 
but  only  to  be  forced  to  acknowledge  after  all 
that  they  were  put  there  by  the  choice  of  the 
majority,"  she  wished  to  forget  it  all  :  and  her 
poetic  temperament  which  unfitted  her  for 
success  in  politics  assisted  her  in  finding  con- 
solation in  nature. 

Moreover  a  district  like  Le  Berry,  singularly 
untouched  by  corruptions  of  the  civilization,  and 
preserving  intact  many  old  and  interesting  char- 
acteristics, was  a  field  in  which  she  might  draw 
from  reality  many  an  attractive  picture.  She 
was  as  much  rallied  by  town  critics  about  her 
shepherdesses  as  though  she  had  invented  them. 
And  yet  she  saw  them  every  day,  and  they  may 
be  seen  still  by  any  wanderer  in  those  lanes, 


200  GEORGE  SAND. 

and  at  every  turn,  Fanchons,  Maries,  Nanons, 
as  she  described  them,  tending  their  flock  of 
from  five  to  a  dozen  sheep,  or  a  few  geese,  a 
goat  and  a  donkey,  all  day  long  between  the  tall 
hedgerows,  or  on  the  common,  spinning  the 
while,  or  possibly  dreaming.  A  certain  refine- 
ment of  cast  distinguishes  the  type.  Eugene 
Delacroix,  in  a  letter  describing  a  village  festi- 
val at  Nohant,  remarks  that  if  positive  beauty 
is  rare  among  the  natives,  ugliness  is  a'  thing 
unknown.  A  gentle,  passive  cast  of  counte- 
nance prevails  among  the  women  :  "  They  are 
all  St.  Annes,"  as  the  artist  expresses  it.  The 
inevitable  changes  brought  about  by  steam- 
communication,  which  have  as  yet  only  begun 
to  efface  the  local  habits  and  peculiarities,  must 
shortly  complete  their  work.  George  Sand's 
pastoral  novels  will  then  have  additional  value, 
as  graphic  studies  of  a  state  of  things  that  has 
passed  away. 

It  does  not  appear  that  the  merit  of  these 
stories  was  so  quickly  recognized  as  that  of 
Indiana  and  Valentine.  The  author  might 
abstract  herself  awhile  from  passing  events  and 
write  idylls,  but  the  public  had  probably  not  yet 
settled  down  into  the  proper  state  of  mind  for 
fully  enjoying  them.  Moreover  Madame  Sand's 
antagonists  in  politics  and  social  science,  as 
though  under  the  impression  that  she  could  not 


PASTORAL    TALES.  2OI 

write  except  to  advance  some  theory  of  which 
they  disapproved,  pre-supposed  in  these  stories 
a  set  purpose  of  exalting  the  excellence  of  rustic 
as  compared  with  polite  life  —  of  exaggerating 
the  virtues  of  the  poor,  to  throw  into  relief  the 
vices  of  the  rich.  The  romances  themselves  do 
not  bear  out  such  a  supposition.  In  them  the 
author  chooses  exactly  the  same  virtues  to  exalt, 
the  same  vices  to  condemn,  as  in  her  novels 
of  refined  society.  She  shows  us  intolerance, 
selfishness,  and  tyranny  of  custom  marring  or 
endangering  individual  happiness  among  the 
working-classes,  as  with  their  superiors.  There 
are  Philistines  in  her  thatched  cottages,  as  well 
as  in  her  marble  halls.  Germain,  in  La  Mare 
au  Diable,  has  some  difficulty  to  discover  for 
himself,  as  well  as  to  convince  his  family  and 
neighbors,  that  in  espousing  the  penniless  Marie 
he  is  not  marrying  beneath  him  in  every  sense. 
Francois  le  Champi  is  a  pariah,  an  outcast  in 
the  estimation  of  the  rustic  world.  Fanchon 
Fadet,  by  her  disregard  of  appearances  and 
village  etiquette,  scandalizes  the  conservative 
minds  of  farmers  and  millers  very  much  as 
Aurore  Dupin  scandalized  the  leaders  of  society 
at  La  Chatre.  Most  prominence  is  given  to  the 
more  pleasing  characters,  but  the  existence  of 
brutality  and  cupidity  among  the  peasant  classes 
is  nowhere  kept  out  of  sight.  Her  long  practi- 


202  GEORGE    SAND. 

cal  acquaintance  with  these  classes  indeed  was 
fatal  to  illusions  on  the  subject.  The  average 
son  of  the  soil  was  as  far  removed  as  any  other 
living  creature  from  her  ideal  of  humanity,  and 
at  the  very  time  when  she  penned  La  Petite 
Fadette  she  was  experiencing  how  far  the 
ignorance,  ill-will,  and  stupidity  of  her  poorer 
neighbors  could  go. 

Thus  she  writes  from  Nohant  to  Barbes  at 
Vincennes,  November  1848:  "Since  May,  I 
have  shut  myself  up  in  prison  in  my  retreat, 
where,  though  without  the  hardships  of  yours,  I 
have  more  to  surfer  than  you  from  sadness  and 
dejection,  .  .  .  and  am  less  in  safety." 
Threatened  by  the  violence  and  hatred  of  the 
people,  she  had  painfully  realized  that  she  and 
her  party  had  their  most  obstinate  enemies 
among  those  whom  they  wished  and  worked  to 
save  and  defend. 

Her  profound  discouragement  finds  expression 
in  many  of  her  letters  from  1849  to  1852.  The 
more  sanguine  hopes  of  Mazzini  and  other  of 
her  correspondents  she  desires,  but  no  longer 
expects,  to  see  fulfilled.  She  compares  the 
moral  state  of  France  to  the  Russian  retreat ; 
the  soldiers  in  the  great  army  of  progress  seized 
with  vertigo,  and  seeking  death  in  fighting  with 
each  other. 

To  her  son,  who  was  in  Paris  at  the  time  of 
the  disturbances  in  May,  1849,  sne  writes  :  — 


PASTORAL    TALES.  203 

Come  back,  I  implore  you.  I  have  only  you  in  the 
world,  and  your  death  would  be  mine.  I  can  still  be  of 
some  small  use  to  the  cause  of  truth,  but  if  I  were  to  lose 
you  it  would  be  all  over  with  me.  I  have  not  got  the 
stoicism  of  Barbes  and  Mazzini.  It  is  true  they  are  men, 
and  they  have  no  children.  Besides,  in  my  opinion  it  is 
not  in  fight,  not  by  civil  war,  that  we  shall  win  the  cause 
of  humanity  in  France.  We  have  got  universal  suffrage. 
The  worse  for  us  if  we  do  not  know  how  to  avail  ourselves 
of  it,  for  that  alone  can  lastingly  emancipate  us,  and  the 
only  thing  that  would  give  us  the  right  to  take  up  arms 
would  be  an  attempt  on  their  part  to  take  away  our  right 
to  vote. 

During  the  two  years  preceding  the  coup 
cTttat  of  December,  1851,  life  at  Nohant  had 
resumed  its  wonted  cheerfulness  of  aspect. 
Madame  Sand  was  used  to  surround  herself 
with  young  people  and  artistic  people  ;  but  now, 
amid  their  light-heartedness,  she  had  for  a 
period  to  battle  with  an  extreme  inward  sad- 
ness, confirmed  by  the  fresh  evidence  brought 
by  these  years  of  the  demoralization  in  all  ranks 
of  opinion.  "  Your  head  is  not  very  lucid  when 
your  heart  is  so  deeply  wounded,"  she  had 
remarked  already,  after  the  disasters  of  1848, 
"  and  how  can  one  help  suffering  mortally  from 
the  spectacle  of  civil  'war  and  the  slaughter 
among  the  people  ?  " 

To  that  was  now  added  a  loss  of  faith  in  the 
virtues  of  her  own  party,  as  well  as  of  the 


204  GEORGE  SAND. 

masses.  It  is  no  wonder  if  she  fell  out  of  love 
for  awhile  with  the  ideals  of  romance,  with  her 
own  art  of  fiction,  and  the  types  of  heroism  that 
were  her  favorite  creations.  But  if  the  shadow 
of  a  morbid  pessimism  crept  over  her  mind,  she 
could  view  it  now  as  a  spiritual  malady  which 
she  had  yet  the  will  and  the  strength  to  live 
down ;  as  years  before  she  had  surmounted  a 
similar  phase  of  feeling  induced  by  personal 
sorrow. 

Already,  in  1847,  she  had  begun  to  write  her 
Memoirs,  and  reverting  to  them  now,  she  found 
there  work  that  suited  her  mood,  as  dealing 
with  the  past,  more  agreeable  to  contemplate 
just  then  than  the  present  or  the  future. 

However,  in  September,  1850,  we  find  her 
writing  to  Mazzini,  —  after  dwelling  on  the  pres- 
ent shortcomings  of  the  people,  and  the  mixture 
of  pity  and  indignation  with  which  they  inspired 
her :  "  I  turn  back  to  fiction  and  produce,  in 
art,  popular  types  such  as  I  see  no  longer ;  but 
as  they  ought  to  be  and  might  be."  She  alludes 
to  a  play  on  which  she  was  engaged,  and  con- 
tinues :  "  The  dramatic  form,  being  new  to  me, 
has  revived  me  a  little  of  late ;  it  is  the  only 
kind  of  work  into  which  I  have  been  able  to 
throw  myself  for  a  year." 

The  events  of  December,  1851,  surprised  her 
during  a  brief  visit  to  Paris.  Her  hopes  for 


PASTORAL    TALES.  2O$ 

her  country  had  sunk  so  low,  that  she  owns  her- 
self at  the  moment  not  to  have  regarded  the 
coup  tfdtafaa  likely  to  prove  more  disastrous  to 
the  cause  of  progress  than  any  other  of  the  vio- 
lent ends  which  threatened  the  existing  political 
situation.  She  left  the  capital  in  the  midst  of 
the  cannonade,  and  with  her  family  around  her 
at  Nohant  awaited  the  issue  of  the  new  dicta- 
torship. 

The  wholesale  arrests  that  followed  imme- 
diately, and  filled  the  country  with  stupefac- 
tion, made  havoc  on  all  sides  of  her.  Among 
the  victims  were  comrades  of  her  childhood, 
numbers  of  her  friends  and  acquaintance  and 
their  relatives — as  well  in  Berry  as  in  the 
capital — many  arrested  solely  on  suspicion  of 
hostility  to  the  President's  views,  yet  none  the 
less  exposed  to  chances  of  death,  or  captivity, 
or  exile. 

The  crisis  drove  Madame  Sand  once  more  to 
quit  the  privacy  of  her  country  life,  but  this 
time  in  the  capacity  of  intecessor  with  the 
conqueror  for  his  victims.  She  came  up  to 
Paris,  and  on  January  20,  1852,  addressed  a 
letter  to  the  President,  imploring  his  clemency 
for  the  accused  generally  in  an  admirably  elo- 
quent appeal  to  his  sentiments  as  well  of  justice 
as  of  generosity.  The  plea  she  so  forcibly 
urged,  that  according  to  his  own  professions 


206  GEORGE   SAND. 

mere  opinion  was  not  to  be  prosecuted  as  a 
crime,  whereas  the  so-called  "  preventive 
measures "  had  involved  in  one  common  ruin 
with  his  active  opponents  those  who  had  been 
mere  passive  spectators  of  late  events,  was,  of 
course,  unanswerable.  The  future  Emperor 
granted  her  two  audiences  within  a  week  at  the 
Elysee,  in  answer  to  her  request,  and  he  suc- 
ceeded on  the  first  occasion  in  convincing  her 
that  the  acts  of  iniquity  and  intimidation  per- 
petrated as  by  his  authority  were  as  completely 
in  defiance  of  his  public  intentions  as  of  his 
private  principles.  As  a  personal  favor  to  her- 
self, he  readily  offered  her  the  release  of  any  of 
the  political  prisoners  that  she  choose  to  name, 
and  promised  that  a  general  amnesty  should 
speedily  follow.  She  left  him,  reassured  to 
some  extent  as  to  the  fate  in  store  for  her  coun- 
try. The  second  interview  she  had  solicited  in 
order  to  plead  the  cause  of  one  of  her  personal 
friends,  condemned  to  transportation.  The 
mission  was  a  delicate  one,  for  her  client  would 
engage  himself  to  nothing  for  tjie  future,  and 
Madame  Sand,  in  petitioning  for  his  release, 
saw  no  better  course  open  to  her  than  as  ex- 
pressed by  herself,  frankly  to  denounce  him  to 
the  President  as  his  "incorrigible  personal  en- 
emy." Upon  this  the  President  granted  her  the 
prisoner's  full  pardon  at  once.  Madame  Sand 


PASTORAL    TALES.  2O/ 

was  naturally  touched  by  this  ready  response 
of  the  generous  impulse  to  which  she  had 
trusted.  To  those  who  cast  doubts  on  the 
sincerity  of  any  good  sentiment  in  such  a 
quarter,  she  very  properly  replied  that  it  was 
not  for  her  to  be  the  first  to  discredit  the  gen- 
erosity she  had  so  successfully  appealed  to. 

But  between  her  republican  friends,  loth  to 
owe  their  deliverance  to  the  tender  mercies  of 
Louis  Napoleon,  and  her  own  desire  to  save 
their  lives  and  liberties,  and  themselves  and 
their  families  from  ruin  and  despair,  she  found 
her  office  of  mediator  a  most  unthankful  one. 
She  persisted  however  in  unwearying  appli- 
cations for  justice  and  mercy,  addressed  both 
to  the  dictator  directly,  and  through  his  cousin, 
Prince  Napoleon  (Jerome),  between  whom  and 
herself  there  existed  a  cordial  esteem.  She 
clung  as  long  as  she  could  to  her  belief  in  the 
public  virtue  of  the  President,  or  Emperor  as 
he  already  began  to  be  called  here  and  there, 
But  the  promised  clemency  limited  itself  to  a 
number  of  particular  cases  for  whom  she  had 
specially  interceded. 

The  subsequent  conditions  of  France  pre- 
cluded all  free  emission  of  socialist  or  republican 
opinions,  but  Madame  Sand  desired  nothing 
better  than  to  send  in  her  political  resignation  ; 
and  it  is  impossible  to  share  the  regret  of  some 


208  GEORGE    SAND. 

of  her  fellow-republicans  at  finding  her  again 
devoting  her  best  energies  to  her  art  of  fiction, 
and  in  November,  1853,  writing  to  Mazzini  such 
words  of  wisdom  as  these  :  — 

You  are  suprised  that  I  can  work  at  literature.  For 
my  part,  I  thank  God  that  he  has  let  me  preserve  this 
faculty  ;  for  an  honest  and  clear  conscience  like  mine 
still  finds,  apart  from  all  debate,  a  work  of  moralization 
to  pursue.  What  should  I  do  if  I  relinquish  my  task, 
humble  though  it  be  ?  Conspire  ?  It  is  not  my  vocation ; 
I  should  make  nothing  of  it.  Pamphlets  ?  I  have 
neither  the  wit  nor  the  wormwood  required  for  that. 
Theories  ?  We  have  made  too  many,  and  have  fallen  to 
disputing,  which  is  the  grave  of  all  truth  and  all  strength. 
I  am,  and  always  have  been,  artist  before  everything  else. 
I  know  that  mere  politicians  look  on  artists,  with  great 
contempt,  judging  them  by  some  of  those  mountebank- 
types  which  are  a  disgrace  to  art.  But  you,  my  friend, 
you  well  know  that  a  real  artist  is  as  useful  as  the  priest 
and  the  -warrior,  and  that  when  he  respects  what  is  true 
and  what  is  good,  he  is  in  the  right  path  where  the  divine 
blessing  will  attend  him.  Art  belongs  to  all  countries 
and  to  all  time,  and  its  special  good  is  to  live  on  when  all 
else  seems  to  be  dying.  That  is  why  Providence  delivers 
it  from  passions  too  personal  or  too  general,  and  has 
given  to  its  organization  patience  and  persistence,  an 
enduring  sensibility,  and  that  contemplative  sense  upon 
which  rests  invincible  faith. 

Her  novel,  Les  Maitres  Sonneurs,  the  first- 
fruits  of  the  year  1853,  is  what  most  will  con- 
sider a  very  good  equivalent  for  party  pamphlets 
and  political  diatribes. 


PASTORAL    TALES.  209 

When  composing  La  Mare  au  Diable,  in  1 846, 
Madame  Sand  looked  forward  to  writing  a  series 
of  such  peasant  tales,  to  be  collectively  entitled 
Les  VeUties  du  Chanvreur,  the  hemp-beaters 
being,  as  will  be  recollected,  the  Scheherazades 
of  each  village.  Their  number  was  never  to  be 
thus  augmented,  but  the  idea  is  recalled  by  the 
chapter-headings  of  Les  Maitres  Sonneurs,  in 
which  Etienne  Despardieu,  or  Tiennet,  the  rustic 
narrator,  tells,  in  the  successive  veill/es  of  a 
month,  the  romance  of  his  youth.  It  is  a  work 
of  a  very  different  type  to  the  rural  tales  that 
had  preceded  it,  and  should  be  regarded  apart 
from  them.  It  is  longer,  more  complex  in 
form  and  sentiment,  more  of  an  ideal  composi- 
tion. Les  Maitres  Sonneurs,  is  a  delightful 
pastoral,  woodland  fantasy,  standing  by  itself 
among  romances  much  as  stands  a  kindred 
work  of  imagination,  "As  You  Like  It,"  among 
plays,  yet  thoroughly  characteristic  of  George 
Sand,  the  na'ture-lover,  the  seer  into  the  mys- 
teries of  human  character,  and  the  imaginative 
artist.  The  agreeable  preponderates  in  the 
story,  but  it  has  its  tragic  features  and  its  serious 
import.  A  picturesque  and  uncommon  setting 
adds  materially  to  its  charm.  Every  thread 
tells  in  this  delicate  piece  of  fancy-work,  and 
the  weaver's  art  is  indescribable.  But  one  may 
note  the  ingenuity  with  which  four  or  five 


210  GEORGE  SAND. 

interesting  yet  perfectly  natural  types  are 
brought  into  a  group  and  contrasted ;  improb- 
able incidents  so  handled  as  not  to  strike  a  dis- 
cordant note,  the  characteristics  of  the  past 
introduced  without  ever  losing  hold  of  the  links, 
the  points  of  identity  between  past  and  present. 
The  scene  is  the  hamlet  of  Nohant  itself ;  the 
time  is  a  century  ago,  when  the  country,  half 
covered  with  forest,  was  wilder,  the  customs 
rougher,  the  local  coloring  stronger  than  even 
Madame  Sand  in  her  childhood  had  known 
them.  The  personages  belong  to  the  rural 
proprietor  class.  The  leading  characters  are  all 
somewhat  out  of  the  common,  but  such  exist  in 
equal  proportions  in  all  classes  of  society,  and 
there  is  ample  evidence  besides  George  Sand's 
of  notable  examples  among  the  French  peas- 
antry. The  plot  and  its  interest  lie  in  the 
development  of  character  and  the  fine  tracing 
of  the  manner  in  which  the  different  characters 
are  influenced  by  circumstances  and  by  each 
other.  If  the  beauty  of  rustic  maidens,  and  of 
rustic  songs  and  dance-music,  as  here  described, 
seem  to  transcend  probability,  it  must  be 
remembered  it  is  a  peasant  who  speaks  of  these 
wonders,  and  as  wonders  they  might  appear  to 
his  limited  experience.  As  a  musical  novel,  it 
has  the  ingenious  distinction  of  being  told  from 
the  point  of  view  of  the  sturdy  and  honest,  but 


PASTORAL    TALES.  211 

unartistic  and  non-musical  Tiennet ;  a  typical 
Berrichon.  Madame  Sand  was  of  opinion  that 
during  the  long  occupation  of  Berry  by  the 
English  the  two  races  had  blended  extensively, 
and  she  would  thus  account  for  some  of  the 
heavier,  more  inexpansive  qualities  of  our  nation 
having  become  characteristic  of  this  French 
province. 

More  than  one  English  reader  of  Les  Mattres 
Sonneurs  may  have  been  struck  by  the  picture 
there  presented  of  peasant-folk  in  a  state  of 
peace  and  comfort,  such  as  we  do  not  suppose 
to  have  been  common  in  France  before  the  Rev- 
olution. Madame  Sand  has  elsewhere  explained 
how,  as  a  fact,  Nohant,  and  other  estates  in  the 
region  round  about,  had  enjoyed  some  immunity 
from  the  worst  abuses  of  the  ancien  regime. 
Several  of  these  properties,  as  it  happened,  had 
fallen  to  women  or  minors  —  widows,  elderly 
maiden  ladies,  who,  and  their  agents,  spared 
the  holders  and  cultivators  of  the  soil  the  exac- 
tions which,  by  right  or  by  might,  its  lords  were 
used  to  levy.  "  So  the  peasants,"  she  writes, 
"  were  accustomed  not  to  put  themselves  to  any 
inconvenience ;  and  when  came  the  Revolution 
they  were  already  so  well  relieved  virtually  from 
feudal  bonds  that  they  took  revenge  on  nobody." 
A  new  seigneur  of  Nohant,  coming  to  take  pos- 
session, and  thinking  to  levy  his  utmost  dues, 


212  GEORGE  SAND, 

in  cash  and  in  kind,  found  his  rustic  tenants 
turn  a  deaf  ear  to  his  summons.  Ere  he  could 
insist  the  storm  burst,  but  it  brought  no  convul- 
sion, and  merely  confirmed  an  independence 
already  existing. 

Les  Maitres  Sonneurs,  whilst  illustrating 
some  of  the  most  striking  merits  of  George 
Sand,  is  free  from  the  defects  often  laid  to  her 
charge ;  and  although  of  all  her  pastorals  it 
must  surfer  the  most  when  rendered  in  any 
language  but  the  original,  it  is  much  to  be 
regretted  that  some  good  translation  of  this 
work  should  not  put  it  within  the  reach  of  all 
English  readers. 


CHAPTER  X. 

PLAYS  AND  LATER  NOVELS. 

THERE  are  few  eminent  novelists  that  have 
not  tried  their  hands  at  writing  for  the  stage ; 
and  Madame  Sand  had  additional  inducements 
to  do  so,  beyond  those  of  ambition  satiated  with 
literary  success,  and  tempted  by  the  charm  of 
making  fresh  conquest  of  the  public  in  a  more 
direct  and  personal  fashion. 

From  early  childhood  she  had  shown  a  strong 
liking  for  the  theatre.  The  rare  performances 
given  by  travelling  acting-companies  at  La 
Chatre  had  been  her  greatest  delight  when  a 
girl.  At  the  convent-school  she  had  arranged 
Moliere  from  memory  for  representation  by 
herself  and  her  school-fellows,  careful  so  to 
modify  the  piece  as  to  avoid  all  possibility  of 
shocking  the  nuns.  Thus  the  Sisters  applauded 
Le  Malade  Iinaginaire  without  any  suspicion 
that  the  author  was  one  whose  works,  for  them, 
were  placed  under  a  ban,  and  whose  very  name 
they  held  in  devout  abhorrence.  She  inherited 


214  GEORGE  SAND. 

from  her  father  a  taste  for  acting,  which  she 
transmitted  to  her  children.  We  have  seen 
her  during  her  literary  novitiate  in  Paris,  a 
studious  observer  at  all  theatres,  from  the 
classic  boards  of  the  Franc.ais  down  to  the 
lowest  of  popular  stages,  the  Funambules,  where 
reigned  at  that  time  a  real  artist  in  pantomime, 
Debureau.  His  Pierrot,  a  sort  of  modified 
Pulchinello,  was  renowned,  and  attracted  more 
fastidious  critics  to  his  audience  than  the 
Paris  artisans  whose  idol  he  was.  Since  then 
Madame  Sand  had  numbered  among  her  per- 
sonal friends  such  leading  dramatic  celebrities 
as  Madame  Dorval,  Bocage,  and  Pauline  Garcia. 
"  I  like  actors,"  she  says  playfully,  "  which  has 
scandalized  some  austere  people.  I  have  also 
been  found  fault  with  for  liking  the  peasantry. 
Among  these  I  have  passed  my  life,  and  as  I 
found  them,  so  have  I  described  them.  As 
these,  in  the  light  of  the  sun,  give  us  our  daily 
bread  for  our  bodies,  so  those  by  gaslight  give 
us  our  daily  bread  of  fiction,  so  needful  to  the 
wearied  spirit,  troubled  by  realities."  Peasants 
and  players  seem  to  be  the  types  of  humanity 
farthest  removed  from  each  other,  and  it  is 
worthy  of  remark  that  George  Sand  was  equally 
successful  in  her  presentation  of  both. 

Her    preference    for    originality   and    spon- 
taneity before  all  other  qualities  in  a  dramatic 


PLAYS  AND  LATER  NOVELS.         215 

artist  was  characteristic  of  herself,  though  not 
of  her  nation.  Thus  it  was  that  Madame  Dor- 
val,  the  heroine  of  Antony  and  Marion  Delonne, 
won  her  unbounded  admiration.  Even  in 
Racine  she  clearly  preferred  her  to  Mile. 
Mars,  as  being  a  less  studied  actress,  and  one 
who  abandoned  herself  more  to  the  inspiration 
of  the  moment.  The  effect  produced,  as 
described  by  Madame  Sand,  will  be  understood 
by  all  keenly  alive,  like  herself,  to  the  enjoy- 
ment of  dramatic  art.  "  She  "  (Madame  Dor- 
val)  "  seemed  to  me  to  be  myself,  more  expan- 
sive, and  to  express  in  action  and  emotion  all 
that  I  seek  to  express  in  writing."  And  com- 
pared with  such  an  art,  in  which  conception 
and  expression  are  simultaneous,  her  own  art  of 
words  and  phrases  would  at  such  moments 
appear  to  her  as  but  a  pale  reflection. 

Bocage,  the  great  character  actor  of  his  time, 
was  another  who  likewise  appealed  particularly 
to  her  sympathies,  as  the  personation,  on  the 
boards,  of  the  protest  of  the  romantic  school 
against  the  slavery  of  convention  and  tradition. 
Her  acquaintance  with  him  dated  from  the 
first  representation  of  Hugo's  Lucrtce  Borgia, 
Feburary,  1833,  when  Bocage  and  the  author  of 
Indiana,  then  strangers  to  each  other,  chanced 
to  sit  side  by  side.  In  their  joint  enthusiasm 
over  the  play  they  made  the  beginning  of  a 


2l6  GEORGE    SAND. 

thirty  years'  friendship,  terminated  only  by 
Bocage's  death  in  1862.  "It  was  difficult  not 
to  quarrel  with  him,"  she  says  of  this  popular 
favorite  ;  "  he  was  susceptible  and  violent ;  it 
was  impossible  not  to  be  reconciled  with  him 
quickly.  He  was  faithful  and  magnanimous. 
He  forgave  you  admirably  for  wrongs  you  had 
never  done  him,  and  it  was  as  good  and  real  as 
though  the  pardon  had  been  actual  and  well- 
founded,  so  strong  was  his  imagination,  so  com- 
plete his  good  faith." 

The  assistance  of  Madame  Dorval,  added  to 
the  strength  of  the  Come"die  Fran^aise  com- 
pany, did  not,  however,  save  from  failure  Mad- 
ame Sand's  first  drama,  Cosima,  produced,  as 
will  be  remembered,  in  1840.  She  allowed 
nearly  a  decade  to  elapse  before  again  seriously 
competing  for  theatrical  honors,  by  a  second 
effort  in  a  different  style,  and  more  satisfactory 
in  its  results. 

This,  a  dramatic  adaptation  by  herself  of  her 
novel,  Francois  le  Champi,  was  produced  at  the 
Odeon  in  the  winter  of  1849.  Generally  speak- 
ing, to  make  a  good  play  out  of  a  good  novel, 
the  playwright  must  begin  by  murdering  the 
novel ;  and  here,  as  in  all  George  Sand's  dra- 
matic versions  of  her  romances,  we  seem  to  miss 
the  best  part  of  the  original.  However,  the 
curious  simplicity  of  the  piece,  the  rustic 


PLAYS  AND  LATER  NOVELS.         21 7 

scenes  and  personages,  here  faithfully  copied 
from  reality,  unlike  the  conventional  village  and 
villager  of  opera  comique,  and  the  pleasing 
sentiment  that  runs  through  the  tale,  were 
found  refreshing  by  audiences  upon  whom  the 
sensational  incidents  and  harrowing  emotions 
of  their  modern  drama  were  already  beginning 
to  pall.  The  result  was  a  little  stage  triumph 
for  Madame  Sand.  It  helped  to  draw  to  her 
pastoral  tales  the  attention  they  deserved,  but 
had  not  instantly  won  in  all  quarters.  Th^o- 
phile  Gautier  writes  playfully  of  this  piece: 
"  The  success  of  Francois  le  CJtampi  has  given 
all  our  vaudeville  writers  an  appetite  for  rus- 
ticity. Only  let  this  go  on  a  little,  and  we 
shall  be  inundated  by  what  has  humorously 
been  called  the  'ruro-drama.'  Morvan  hats 
and  Berrichon  head-dresses  will  invade  the 
scenes,  and  no  language  be  spoken  but  in  dia- 
lect." 

Madame  Sand  was  naturally  encouraged  to 
repeat  the  experiment.  TJiis  was  done  in 
Claudie  (1851)  and  Le  Pressoir  (1853),  ruro- 
dramas  both,  and  most  favorably  received. 
The  first-named  has  a  simple  and  pathetic  story, 
and,  as  usual  with  Madame  Sand's  plays,  it  was 
strengthened  at  its  first  production  by  the 
support  of  some  of  the  best  acting  talent  in 
Paris  —  Fechter,  then  a  rising  jeune  premier, 


2l8  GEORGE  SAND. 

and  the  veteran  Bocage  ably  representing, 
respectively,  youth  and  age.  Old  Berrichon 
airs  were  introduced  with  effect,  as  also  such 
picturesque  rustic  festival  customs  as  the 
ancient  harvest-home  ceremony,  in  which  the 
last  sheaf  is  brought  on  a  wagon,  gaily  decked 
out  with  poppies,  cornflowers  and  ribbons,  and 
receives  a  libation  of  wine  poured  by  the  hand 
of  the  oldest  or  youngest  person  present. 

"But  what  the  theatre  can  never  reproduce," 
laments  Madame  Sand,  "is  the  majesty  of  the 
frame  —  the  mountain  of  sheaves  solemnly 
approaching,  drawn  by  three  pairs  of  enormous 
oxen,  the  whole  adorned  with  flowers,  with 
fruit,  and  with  fine  little  children  perched  upon 
the  top  of  the  last  sheaves." 

Henceforward  a  good  deal  of  her  time  and 
interest  continued  to  be  absorbed  by  these 
dramatic  compositions.  But  though  mostly 
eliciting  during  her  lifetime  3.  gratifying  amount 
of  public  favor  and  applause,  the  best  of  them 
cannot  for  an  instant  be  placed  in  the  same 
high  rank  as  her  novels.  For  with  all  her  wide 
grasp  of  the  value  of  dramatic  art  and  her  exact 
appreciation  of  the  strength  and  weakness  of 
the  acting  world,  her  plays  remain,  to  great 
expectations,  uniformly  disappointing.  Her 
specialty  in  fiction  lies  in  her  favorite  art  of 
analyzing  and  putting  before  us,  with  extreme 


PLAYS  AND  LATER  NOVELS.         219 

clearness,  the  subtlest  ramifications,  the  most 
delicate  intricacies  of  feeling  and  thought.  A 
stage  audience  has  its  eyes  and  ears  too  busy  to 
give  its  full  attention  to  the  finer  complications 
of  sentiment  and  motive ;  or,  at  least,  in  order 
to  keep  its  interest  alive  and  its  understanding 
clear,  an  accentuation  of  outline  is  needed, 
which  she  neglects  even  to  seek. 

Her  assertion,  that  the  niceties  of  emotion 
are  sufficient  to  found  a  good  play  upon,  no  one 
now  will  dream  of  disputing.  But  for  this  an  art 
of  execution  is  needed  of  which  she  had  not  the 
instinct.  The  action  is  insufficient,  or  rather, 
the  sense  of  action  is  not  conveyed.  The 
slightness  of  plot  —  a  mere  thread  in  most  in- 
stances —  requires  that  the  thread  shall  at  least 
be  never  allowed  to  drop.  But  she  cuts  or 
slackens  it  perpetually,  long  arguments  and 
digressions  intervening,  and  the  dialogue,  whose 
monotony  is  unrelieved  by  wit,  nowhere  com- 
pensates for  the  limited  interest  of  the  action. 
Awkward  treatment  is  but  half  felt  when  sub- 
ject and  situations  are  dramatically  strong;  but 
plays  with  so  airy  and  impalpable  a  basis  as 
these  need  to  be  sustained  by  the  utmost  per- 
fection of  construction,  concision  and  polish  of 
dialogue. 

Her  novel  Mauprat  has  many  dramatic  points, 
and  she  received  a  score  of  applications  for 


220  GEORGE    SAND. 

leave  to  adapt  it  to  the  stage.  She  preferred 
to  prepare  the  version  herself,  and  it  was  played 
in  the  winter  of  1853—4,  with  moderate  success. 
But  it  suffers  fatally  from  comparison  with  its 
original.  An  extreme  instance  is  Flaminio 
(1854),  a  protracted  drama,  drawn  by  Madame 
Sand  from  her  novelette  Tevcrino.  This  is  a 
fantasy-piece  whose  audacity  is  redeemed,  as 
are  certain  other  blemishes,  by  the  poetic  sug- 
gestiveness  of  the  figure  of  Madeline,  the  bird- 
charmer  ;  whilst  the  picturesque  sketch  of  Tev- 
erino,  the  idealized  Italian  bohemian,  too  indo- 
lent to  turn  his  high  natural  gifts  to  any  account, 
has  proved  invaluable  to  the  race  of  novelists, 
who  are  not  yet  tired  of  reproducing  it  in  large. 
The  work  is  one  addressed  mainly  to  the  im- 
agination. 

In  the  play  we  come  down  from  the  clouds ; 
the  poetry  is  gone,  taste  is  shocked,  fancy 
uncharmed,  the  improbabilities  become  gro- 
tesque, and  the  whole  is  distorted  and  tedious. 
Madame  Sand's  personages  are  never  weary  of 
analyzing  their  sentiments.  Her  flowing  style, 
so  pleasant  to  read,  carries  us  swiftly  and  easily 
through  her  dissertations  in  print,  before  we 
have  time  to  tire  of  them.  On  the  stage  such 
colloquies  soon  appear  lengthy  and  unnatural. 
The  climax  of  absurdity  is  reached  in  Flaminio, 
where  we  find  the  adventurer  expatiating  to  the 


PLAYS  AND  LATER  NOVELS.         221 

man    of    the  world  on    "the   divinity  of    his 
essence." 

There  is  scarcely  a  department  of  theatrical 
literature  in  which  Madame  Sand  does  not 
appear  as  an  aspirant.  She  was  a  worshipper 
of  Shakespeare,  acknowledging  him  as  the  king 
of  dramatic  writers.  For  her  attempt  to  adapt 
"  As  You  Like  It"  to  suit  the  tastes  of  a  Paris- 
ian audience,  she  disarms  criticism  by  a  preface 
in  the  form  of  a  letter  to  M.  Regnier,  of  the 
Comedie  Franchise,  prefixed  to  the  printed  play. 
Here  she  says  plainly  that  to  resolve  to  alter 
Shakespeare  is  to  resolve  to  murder,  and  that 
she  aims  at  nothing  more  than  at  giving  the 
French  public  some  idea  of  the  original.  In 
"  As  You  Like  It"  the  license  of  fancy  taken 
is  too  wide  for  the  piece  to  be  safely  repre- 
sented to  her  countrymen,  since  it  must  jar 
terribly  on  "that  French  reason  which,"  remarks 
Madame  Sand,  "  we  are  so  vain  of,  and  which 
deprives  us  of  so  many  originalities  quite  as 
precious  as  itself."  The  fantastic,  which  had 
so  much  attraction  for  her  (possibly  a  result  of 
her  part  German  origin),  is  a  growth  that  has 
hard  work  to  flourish  on  French  soil.  The 
reader  will  remember  the  fate  of  Weber's  Frei- 
scJiiitz,  outrageously  hissed  when  first  produced, 
at  Paris  in  its  original  form.  Nine  days  later  it 
was  reproduced,  having  been  taken  to  pieces 


222  GEORGE  SAND. 

and  put  together  again  by  M.  Castil-Blaze,  and 
thus  as  Robin  des  Bois  it  ran  for  357  nights. 
The  reckless  imagination  that  distinguishes  the 
Shakespearian  comedy  and  does  not  shrink 
before  the  introduction  of  a  lion  and  a  serpent 
into  the  forest  of  Arden,  and  the  miraculous 
and  instantaneous  conversion  of  the  wretch  Oli- 
ver into  a  worthy  suitor  for  Celia,  needed  to 
be  toned  down  for  acceptance  by  the  Parisians. 
But  Madame  Sand  was  less  fortunate  than  M. 
Castil-Blaze.  Her  version,  produced  at  the 
Theatre  Fra^ais,  in  1856,  failed  to  please, 
although  supported  by  such  actors  as  Delaunay, 
Arnold-Plessy,  and  Favart.  Macready,  who 
had  made  Madame  Sand's  acquaintance  in  1845, 
when  he  was  giving  Shakespearian  perform- 
ances in  Paris,  and  whom  she  greatly  admired, 
dedicating  to  him  her  little  theatrical  romance 
Le  Chateau  des  De'sertes,  was  present  at  this 
representation  and  records  it  as  a  failure.  But 
of  her  works  for  the  stage,  which  number  over 
a  score,  few  like  her  Comme  il  vous  plaira 
missed  making  some  mark  at  the  time,  the 
prestige  of  her  name  and  the  exceptionally 
favorable  circumstances  under  which  they  were 
produced  securing  more  than  justice  for  their 
intrinsic  merit.  It  was  natural  that  she  should 
over-estimate  their  value  and  continue  to  add  to 
their  number.  These  pieces  would  be  carefully 


PLAYS  AND  LATER  NOVELS.         223 

rehearsed  on  the  little  stage  in  the  house  at 
Nohant,  often  with  the  aid  of  leading  profes- 
sional actors  ;  and  there,  at  least,  the  success 
was  unqualified. 

Her  ingenious  novel  Les  Beaux  Messieurs 
Bois  Dore",  dramatized  with  the  aid  of  Paul 
Meurice  and^  acted  in  1862,  was  a  triumph  for 
Madame  Sand  and  her  friend  Bocage.  The 
form  and  spirit  of  this  novel  seem  inspired  by 
Sir  Walter  Scott,  and  though  far  from  perfect, 
it  is  a  striking  instance  of  the  versatility  of  her 
imaginative  powers.  The  leading  character  of 
the  septuagenarian  Marquis,  with  his  many 
amiable  virtues,  and  his  one  amiable  weakness, 
a  longing  to  preserve  intact  his  youthfulness  of 
appearance  as  he  has  really  preserved  his  youth- 
fulness  of  heart,  is  both  natural  and  original, 
comic  and  half  pathetic  withal.  The  part  in 
the  play  seemed  made  for  Bocage,  and  his  heart 
was  set  upon  undertaking  it.  But  his  health 
was  failing  at  the  time,  and  the  manager  hesi- 
tated about  giving  him  the  role.  "  Take  care, 
my  friend,"  wrote  Bocage  to  Madame  Sand; 
"  perhaps  I  shall  die  if  I  play  the  part ;  but  if  I 
play  it  not,  I  shall  die  of  that,  to  a  certainty." 
She  insisted,  and  play  it  he  did,  to  perfection, 
she  tells  us.  "  He  did  not  act  the  Marquis  de 
Bois  Dore" ;  he  was  the  personage  himself,  as  the 
author  had  dreamt  him."  It  was  to  be  his  last 


224  GEORGE    SAND. 

achievement,  and  he  knew  it.  "  It  is  my  end," 
he  said  one  night,  "  but  I  shall  die  like  a  soldier 
on  the  field  of  honor."  And  so  he  did,  con- 
tinuing to  play  the  role  up  till  a  few  days  before 
his  death. 

More  lasting  success  has  attended  Madame 
Sand  in  two  of  the  lightest  of  society  comedies, 
Le  Mariage  de  Victorine  and  Le  Marquis  de 
Villemer,  which  seem  likely  to  take  a  perma- 
nent place  in  the  repertoire  of  the  French  stage. 
The  first,  a  continuation  that  had  suggested 
itself  to  her  of  Sedaine's  century-old  comedy, 
Le  Philosophe  sans  le  savoir,  escapes  the  ill  fate 
that  seems  to  attend  sequels  in  general.  It  is 
of  the  slightest  materials,  but  holds  together, 
and  is  gracefully  conceived  and  executed.  First 
produced  at  the  Gymnase  in  1851,  it  was  revived 
during  the  last  year  of  Madame  Sand's  life  in  a 
manner  very  gratifying  to  her,  being  brought 
out  with  great  applause  at  the  Com^die  Fran- 
c.aise,  preceded  on  each  occasion  by  Sedaine's 
play,  and  the  same  artists  appearing  in  both. 

The  excellent  dramatic  version  of  her  popular 
novel  Le  Marquis  de  Villemer,  first  acted  in 
1864,  is  free  from  the  defects  that  weaken  most 
of  her  stage  compositions.  It  is  said  that  in 
preparing  it  she  accepted  some  hints  from  Alex- 
ander Dumas  the  younger.  Whatever  the  cause, 
the  result  is  a  play  where  characters,  composi- 
tion and  dialogue  leave  little  to  be  desired. 


PLAYS  AND  LATER  NOVELS.         22$ 

VAutre,  her  latest  notable  stage  success, 
brings  us  down  to  1870,  when  it  was  acted  at 
the  Gymnase,  Madame  Sarah  Bernhardt  imper- 
sonating the  heroine.  This  not  very  agreeable 
play  is  derived,  with  material  alterations,  from 
Madame  Sand's  agreeable  novel  La  Confession 
(Tune  jeune  Fille,  published  in  1864. 

If,  however,  her  works  for  the  stage,  which 
fill  four  volumes,  added  but  little,  in  proportion 
to  their  quantity,  to  her  permanent  fame,  her 
dramatic  studies  added  fresh  interest  and  variety 
to  her  experience,  which  brought  forth  excellent 
fruit  in  her  novels.  Actors,  their  art  and  way 
of  life  have  fared  notoriously  badly  in  fiction. 
Such  pictures  have  almost  invariably  fallen  into 
the  extreme  of  unreality  or  that  of  caricature, 
whether  for  want  of  information  or  want  of 
sympathy  in  those  who  have  drawn  them. 

The  subject,  always  attractive  for  Madame 
Sand,  is  one  in  which  she  is  always  happy. 
Already  in  the  first  year  of  her  literary  career 
her  keen  appreciation  of  the  art  and  its  higher 
influences  had  prompted  her  clever  novelette 
La  Marquise.  Here  she  illustrates  the  power 
of  the  stage  as  a  means  of  expression  —  of  the 
truly  inspired  actor,  though  his  greatness  be 
but  momentary,  and  his  heroism  a  semblance, 
to  strike  a  like  chord  in  the  heart  of  the  spec- 
tator—  and,  in  a  corrupt  and  artificial  age,  to 
8 


226  GEORGE    SAND. 

keep  alive  some  latent  faith  in  the  ideal.  Since 
then  the  stage  and  players  had  figured  repeat- 
edly in  her  works.  Sometimes  she  portrays  a 
perfected  type,  such  as  Consuelo,  or  Imperia  in 
Pierre  qui  roulc,  but  always  side  by  side  with 
more  earthly  and  faulty  representatives  such  as 
Gorilla  and  Anzoleto,  or  Julia  and  Albany,  in 
Narcisse,,  incarnations  of  the  vanity  and  insta- 
bility that  are  the  chief  dangers  of  the  profes- 
sion, drawn  with  unsparing  realism.  In  Le 
Ch&teau  des  Dtsertes  we  find  further  many 
admirable  theories  and  suggestive  ideas  on  the 
subject  of  the  regeneration  of  the  theatre.  But 
it  fared  with  her  theatrical  as  with  her  political 
philosophy:  she  failed  in  its  application,  not 
because  her  theories  were  false,  but  for  want  of 
practical  aptitude  for  the  craft  whose  principles 
she  understood  so  well. 

It  is  impossible  here  to  do  more  than  cast  a 
rapid  glance  over  the  literary  work  accomplished 
by  George  Sand  during  the  first  decade  of  the 
empire.  It  includes  more  than  a  dozen  novels, 
of  unequal  merit,  but  of  merit  for  the  most 
part  very  high.  The  Histoir  de  ma  Vie  was 
published  in  1 85  5.  It  is  a  study  of  chosen  passages 
out  of  her  life,  rather  than  a  connected  auto- 
biography. One  out  of  the  four  volumes  is 
devoted  to  the  story  of  her  father's  life  before 
her  birth ;  two  more  to  the  story  of  her  child- 


PLAYS  AND  LATER  NOVELS.         22/ 

hood  and  girlhood.  The  fourth  rather  indicates 
than  fully  narrates  the  facts  of  her  existence 
from  the  time  of  her  marriage  till  the  Revolu- 
tion of  1848.  It  offers  to  her  admirers  invalua- 
ble glimpses  into  her  life  and  mind,  and  is  a 
highly  interesting  and  characteristic  compo- 
sition, if  a  most  irregular  chronicle.  It  has 
given  rise  to  two  most  incompatible-sounding 
criticisms.  Some  have  been  chiefly  struck  by 
its  amazing  unreserve,  and  denounced  the  over- 
frankness  of  the  author  in  revealing  herself  to 
the  public.  Others  complain  that  she  keeps  on 
a  mask  throughout,  and  never  allows  us  to  see 
into  the  recesses  of  her  mind.  Her  passion  for 
the  analysis  of  sentiment  has  doubtless  led  her 
here,  as  in  her  romances,  to  give  very  free 
expression  to  truths  usually  better  left  unspoken. 
But  her  silence  on  many  points  about  which 
her  readers,  whether  from  mere  curiosity  or 
some  more  honorable  motive,  would  gladly  have 
been  informed,  was  then  inevitable.  It  could 
not  have  been  broken  without  wounding  the 
susceptibilities  of  living  persons,  which  she  did 
right  in  respecting,  at  the  cost  of  disappoint- 
ment to  an  inqusitive  public. 

In  January,  1855,  a  terrible  domestic  sorrow 
befell  her  in  the  loss  of  her  six-years-old  grand- 
child, Jeanne  Clesinger,  to  whom  she  was 
devoted.  It  affected  her  profoundly.  "  Is 


228  GEORGE    SAND. 

there  a  more  mortal  grief,"  she  exclaims,  "than 
to  outlive,  yourself,  those  who  should  have 
bloomed  upon  your  grave  ? "  The  blow  told 
upon  her  mentally  and  physically ;  she  could  not 
rally  from  its  effects,  till  persuaded  to  seek  a 
restorative  in  change  of  air  and  scene,  which 
happily  did  their  work. 

"I  was  ill,"  she  says,  when  writing  of  these 
events  to  a  lady  correspondent,  later  in  the 
same  year ;  "  my  son  took  me  away  to  Italy. 

.  .  <  .  I  have  seen  Rome,  revisited  Flor- 
ence, Genoa,  Frascati,  Spezia,  Marseilles.  I 
have  walked  a  great  deal,  been  out  in  the  sun, 
the  rain,  the  wind,  for  whole  days  out  of  doors. 
This,  for  me,  is  a  certain  remedy,  and  I  have 
come  back  cured." 

Those  who  care  to  follow  the  mind  of  George 
Sand  on  this  Italian  journey  may  safely  infer 
from  La  Daniella,  a  novel  written  after  this 
tour,  and  the  scene  of  which  is  laid  in  Rome 
and  the  Campagna,  that  the  author's  strongest 
impression  of  the  Eternal  City  was  one  of  dis- 
illusion. Her  hero,  a  Berrichon  artist  on  his 
travels,  confesses  to  a  feeling  of  uneasiness  and 
regret  rather  than  of  surprise  and  admiration. 
The  ancient  ruins,  stupendous  in  themselves, 
seemed  to  her  spoilt  for  effect  by  their  situ- 
ation in  the  center  of  a  modern  town.  "  Of 
the  Rome  of  the  past  not  enough  exists  to 


PLAYS  AND  LATER  NOVELS.         229 

overwhelm  me  with  its  majesty;  of  the  Rome 
of  the  present  not  enough  to  make  me  forget 
the  first,  and  much  too  much  to  allow  me  to  see 
her." 

But  the  Baths  of  Caracalla,  where  the  picture 
is  not  set  in  a  frame  of  hideous  houses, 
awakened  her  native  enthusiasm.  "  A  grandiose 
ruin,"  she  exclaims,  "  of  colossal  proportions ; 
it  is  shut  away,  isolated,  silent  and  respected. 
There  you  feel  the  terrific  power  of  the  Caesars, 
and  the  opulence  of  a  nation  intoxicated  with 
its  royalty  over  the  world." 

So  in  the  Appian  Way,  the  road  of  tombs, 
the  fascination  of  desolation  —  a  desolation  there 
unbroken  and  undisfigured  by  modern  build- 
ings or  otherwise  —  she  felt  to  the  full.  But 
whatever  came  under  her  notice  she  looked  on 
with  the  eye  of  the  poet  and  artist,  not  of  the 
archaeologist,  and  approved  or  disapproved  or 
passed  over  it  accordingly. 

The  beauties  of  nature,  at  Tivoli  and  Frascati, 
appealed  much  more  surely  to  her  sympathies. 
But  of  certain  sites  in  the  Campagna  much 
vaunted  by  tourists  and  hand-books  she  remarks 
pertinently  :  "If  you  were  to  pass  this  village  " 
(Marino)  "  on  the  railway  within  a  hundred 
miles  of  Paris,  you  would  not  pay  it  the  slightest 
attention."  Such  places  had  their  individuality, 
but  she  upheld  that  there  is  not  a  corner  in  the 


230  GEORGE  SAND. 

universe,  "however  common-place  it  may  appear, 
but  has  a  character  of  its  own,  unique  in  this 
world,  for  any  one  who  is  disposed  to  feel  or 
comprehend  it."  In  one  of  her  village  tales  a 
sagacious  peasant  professes  his  profound  con- 
tempt for  the  man  who  cannot  like  the  place  he 
belongs  to. 

Neither  the  grottoes  and  cascades  of  Tivoli, 
the  cypress  and  ilex  gardens  of  Frascati  and 
Albano,  nor  the  ruins  of  Tusculum,  were  ever 
so  pleasant  to  her  eyes  as  the  poplar-fringed 
banks  of  the  Indre,  the  corn-land  sand  hedge- 
rows of  Berry,  and  the  rocky  borders  of  the 
Creuse  at  Crozant  and  Argenton.  She  had  not 
ceased  making  fresh  picturesque  discoveries  in 
her  own  neighborhood.  Of  these  she  records 
an  instance  in  her  pleasant  Promenades  autour 
d'un  village,  a  lively  sketch  of  a  few  days'  walk- 
ing-tour on  the  banks  of  the  Creuse,  undertaken 
by  herself  and  some  naturalist  friends  in  June, 
1857.  In  studying  the  interesting  and  secluded 
village  of  Gargilesse,  with  its  tenth-century 
church  and  crypt  with  ancient  frescoes,  its 
simple  and  independent-minded  population,  in 
following  the  course  of  a  river  whose  natural 
wild  beauties,  equal  to  those  of  the  Wye,  are  as 
yet  undisfigured  here  by  railroad  or  the  hand  of 
man,  lingering  on  its  banks  full  of  summer 
flowers  and  butterflies,  exploring  the  castles  of 


PLAYS  AND  LATER  NOVELS.         231 

Chateaubrun  and  La  Prugne  au  Pot,  George 
Sand  is  happier,  more  herself,  more  communi- 
cative than  in  Rome,  "  the  museum  of  the  uni- 
verse." 

The  years  1858  to  1861  show  her  to  us  in 
the  fullest  conservation  of  her  powers  and  in 
the  heyday  of  activity.  The  group  of  novels 
belonging  to  this  period,  the  climax  of  what 
may  be  called  her  second  career,  is  sufficiently 
remarkable  for  a  novelist  who  was  almost  a 
sexagenarian,  including  Elle  et  Ltii,  L'Homme 
de  Neige,  La  Ville  Noire,  Constance  Verrier,  Le 
Marquis  de  Villemer  and.  Valvedre.  Elle  et  Lui, 
in  which  George  Sand  at  last  broke  silence  in 
her  own  defense  on  the  subject  of  her  rupture 
with  Alfred  de  Musset,  first  appeared  in  the 
Revue  des  Deux  Mondes,  1859.  Though  many 
of  the  details  are  fictitious,  the  author  here  told 
the  history  of  her  relations  with  the  deceased 
poet  much  too  powerfully  for  her  intention  to 
be  mistaken  or  to  escape  severe  blame.  That  a 
magnanimous  silence  would  have  been  the 
nobler  course  on  her  part  towards  the  child  of 
genius  whose  good  genius  she  had  so  signally 
failed  to  be,  need  not  be  disputed.  It  must  be 
remembered,  however,  that  De  Musset  on  his 
side  had  not  refrained  during  his  lifetime  from 
denouncing  in  eloquent  verse  the  friend  he  had 
quarreled  with,  and  satirizing  her  in  pungent 


232  GEORGE   SAND. 

prose.  Making  every  possible  allowance  for 
poetical  figures  of  speech,  he  had  said  enough 
to  provoke  her  to  retaliate.  It  is  impossible  to 
suppose  that  there  was  not  another  side  to  such 
a  question.  But  Madame  Sand  could  not 
defend  herself  without  accusing  her  lost  lover. 
She  often  proved  herself  a  generous  adver- 
sary —  too  generous,  indeed,  for  her  own  advan- 
tage —  and  in  this  instance  it  was  clearly  not 
for  her  own  sake  that  she  deferred  her  apology. 
It  is  even  conceivable  that  the  poet,  when  in 
a  just  frame  of  mind,  and  not  seeking  inspira- 
tion for  his  Nuit  de  Mai  or  Histoire  d'tm  Merle 
blanc,  would  not  have  seen  in  Elle  ct  Ltd  a  falsi- 
fication of  the  spirit  of  their  history.  The  the- 
orizing of  the  outside  world  in  such  matters  is 
of  little  worth  ;  but  the  novel  bears,  conspicu- 
ously among  Madame  Sand's  productions,  the 
stamp  of  a  study  from  real  life,  true  in  its  lead- 
ing features.  And  the  conduct  of  the  heroine, 
Therese,  though  accounted  for  and  eloquently 
defended,  is  by  no  means,  as  related,  ideally 
blameless.  After  an  attachment  so  strong  as  to 
induce  a  seriously-minded  person,  such  as  she  is 
represented,  to  throw  aside  for  it  all  other  con- 
siderations, the  hastiness  with  which,  on  discov- 
ering her  mistake,  she  entertains  the  idea  of 
bestowing  her  hand,  if  not  her  heart,  on  another, 
is  an  exhibition  of  feminine  inconsequence 


PLAYS  AND  LATER  NOVELS.         233 

which  no  amount  of  previous  misconduct  on  the 
part  of  her  lover,  Laurent,  can  justify.  Further, 
Therese  is  self-deceived  in  supposing  her  pas- 
sion to  have  died  out  with  her  esteem.  She 
breaks  with  the  culprit  and  engages  her  word 
to  a  worthier  man.  But  enough  remains  over 
of  the  past  to  prevent  her  from  keeping  the 
promise  she  ought  never  to  have  made.  When 
she  sacrifices  her  unselfish  friend  to  return  to 
the  lover  who  has  made  her  miserable,  she  is 
sincere,  but  not  heroic.  She  is  too  weak  to 
shake  off  the  influence  of  the  fatal  infatuation 
and  shut  out  Laurent  from  her  life,  nor  yet  can 
she  accept  her  heart's  choice  for  better  or 
worse,  even  when  experience  has  left  her  little 
to  learn  with  regard  to  Laurent.  Clearly  both 
friend  and  lover,  out  of  a  novel,  would  feel 
wronged.  Therese's  excuse  lies  in  the  ex- 
tremely trying  character  of  her  companion, 
whose  vagaries  may  be  supposed  to  have  driven 
her  beside  herself  at  times,  just  as  her  airs  of 
superiority  and  mute  reproach  may  have  driven 
him  not  a  little  mad.  Those  who  wish  to  know 
in  what  spirit  Madame  Sand  met  the  attacks 
upon  her  provoked  by  this  book,  will  find  her 
reply  in  a  very  few  words  at  the  conclusion  of 
her  preface  to  Jean  de  la  Roche,  published  the 
same  year. 

Most  readers  of  Elle  et  Lui  have  been  so  pre- 


234  GEORGE  SAND. 

occupied  with  the  question  of  the  rights  and 
wrongs  of  the  originals  in  their  behavior  to  each 
other,  so  inclined  to  judge  of  the  book  accord- 
ing to  its  supposed  accuracy  or  inaccuracy  as  a 
matter  of  history,  that  its  force,  as  a  study  of 
the  attraction  that  so  often  leads  two  excep- 
tional but  hopeless,  irreconcilable  spirits  to  seek 
in  each  other  a  refuge  from  the  isolation  in 
which  their  superiority  places  them,  has  been 
somewhat  overlooked.  Laurent,  whether  a  true 
portrait  or  not,  is  only  too  true  to  nature  ;  ex- 
cessive in  his  admirable  powers  and  in  his 
despicable  weakness.  Therese  is  an  equally 
faithful  picture  of  a  woman  not  quite  up  to  the 
level  of  her  own  principles,  which  are  so  high 
that  any  lapse  from  them  on  her  part  brings 
down  more  disasters  on  herself  and  on  others 
than  the  misdemeanors  of  avowedly  unscrupu- 
lous persons. 

Within  a  few  months  of  Elle  et  Lui  had 
appeared  L'Homme  de  Neige,  *  a  work  of  totally 
different  but  equally  characteristic  cast.  The 
author's  imagination  had  still  all  its  old  zest 
and  activity,  and  readers  for  whom  fancy  has 
any  charm  will  find  this  Scandinavian  romance 
thoroughly  enjoyable.  The  subject  of  the 
marionette  theater,  here  introduced  with  such 

•The  "  Snow  Man,"  translated  by  Virginia  Vaughan.  Bos- 
ton :  Roberts  Brothers. 


PLAYS  AND  LATER  NOVELS,         235 

brilliant  and  ingenious  effect,  she  had  studied 
both  historically  and  practically.  She  and  her 
son  found  it  so  fascinating  that,  years  before 
this  time,  a  miniature  stage  had  been  con- 
structed by  the  latter  at  Nohant,  over  which  he 
presided,  and  which  they  and  their  friends 
found  an  endless  source  of  amusement.  Ma- 
dame Sand  wrote  little  dramas  expressly  for 
such  representations,  and  would  sit  up  all  night, 
making  dresses  for  the  puppets.  In  an  agree- 
able little  article  she  has  devoted  to  the  subject, 
she  describes  how  from  the  crudest  beginnings 
they  succeeded  in  elaborating  their  art  to  a 
high  pitch  ;  the  repertoire  of  their  lilliputian 
theater  including  more  than  twenty  plays,  their 
"company"  over  a  hundred  marionettes. 

To  the  next  year,  1860,  belong  the  pleasant 
tale  of  artisan  life,  La  Ville  Noire,  and  the 
well-known  and  popular  Marquis  de  Villemer, 
notable  as  a  decided  success  in  a  genre  sel- 
dom adopted  by  her,  that  of  the  purely  society 
novel. 

Already  Madame  Sand  had  outlived  the 
period  of  which  she  was  so  brilliant  a  represent- 
ative. After  the  Romantic  movement  had 
spent  its  force,  a  reaction  had  set  in  that  was 
influencing  the  younger  school  of  writers,  and 
that  has  continued  to  give  the  direction  to  suc- 
cessful talent  until  the  present  day.  Of  the  so- 


236  GEORGE   SAND. 

called  "  realism,"  Madame  Sand  said  that  it  was 
nothing  new.  She  saw  there  merely  another 
form  of  the  same  revolt  of  nature  against  affect- 
ation and  convention  which  had  prompted  the 
Romantic  movement,  whose  disciples  had  now 
become  guilty  of  affectation  in  their  turn. 
Madame  Bovary  she  pronounced  with  truth  to 
be  but  concentrated  Balzac.  She  was  ready  to 
perceive  and  do  justice  to  the  great  ability  of 
the  author,  as  to  original  genius  in  any  school ; 
thus  of  Tourguenief  she  speaks  with  enthu- 
siasm :  "  Realist  to  see  all,  poet  to  beautify  all, 
great  heart  to  pity  and  understand  all."  But 
she  deplored  the  increasing  tendency  among 
artists  to  give  the  preference  among  realities  to 
the  ugliest  and  the  most  painful.  Her  personal 
leanings  avowedly  were  towards  the  other 
extreme ;  but  she  was  too  large-minded  not  to 
recognize  that  truth  in  one  form  or  another 
must  always  be  the  prime  object  of  the  artist's 
search.  The  manner  of  its  presentation  will 
vary  with  the  age. 

Let  the  realists,  if  they  like,  go  on  proclaiming  that  all 
is  prose,  and  the  idealists  that  all  is  poesy.  The  last 
will  have  their  rainy  days,  the  first  their  days  of  sun- 
shine. In  all  arts  the  victory  remains  with  a  privileged 
few,  who  go  their  own  ways ;  and  the  discussions  of  the 
"  schools  "  will  pass  away  like  old  fashions. 

On  the  generation   of    writers  that    George 


PLAYS  AND  LATER  NOVELS,         237 

Sand  saw  growing  up,  any  opinion  pronounced 
must  be  premature.  But  with  regard  to  herself, 
it  should  now  be  possible  to  regard  her  work  in 
a  true  perspective.  As  with  Byron,  Dickens, 
and  other  popular  celebrities,  a  phase  of  infinite 
enthusiasm  for  her  writings  was  duly  succeeded 
by  a  phase  of  determined  depreciation.  The 
public  opinion  that  survives  when  blind  friend- 
ship and  blind  enmity  have  done  their  worst  is 
likely  to  be  the  judgment  of  posterity. 


CHAPTER  XI. 

ARTIST   AND    MORALIST. 

ON  what,  in  the  future,  will  the  fame  of  George 
Sand  mainly  rest  ?  According  to  some  critics, 
on  her  gifts  of  fertile  invention  and  fluent  nar- 
ration alone,  which  make  her  novels  attractive 
in  spite  of  the  chimerical  theories,  social,  politi- 
cal and  religious,  everywhere  interwoven.  Ac- 
cording to  other  judges  again,  her  fictions  tran- 
scend and  are  likely  to  outlive  other  fictions  by 
virtue  of  certain  eternal  philosophic  verities 
which  they  persistently  set  forth,  and  which 
give  them  a  serious  interest  the  changes  in 
novel-fashions  cannot  effect. 

The  conclusion  seems  inevitable  that  whilst 
the  artistic  strength  of  George  Sand's  writings 
is  sufficient  to  command  readers  among  those 
most  out  of  harmony  with  her  views,  to  minds 
in  sympathy  with  her  own  these  romances, 
because  they  express  and  enforce  with  earnest- 
ness, sincerity  and  fire,  the  sentiments  of  a 
poetic  soul,  a  generous  heart,  and  an  immense 
intelligence,  on  subjects  of  consequence  to 


ARTIST  AND  MORALIST.  239 

humanity,  have  a  higher  value  than  can  attach 
to  skillful  development  of  plot  and  intrigue, 
mere  display  of  literary  cleverness,  or  of  the 
storings  of  minute  observation. 

Her  opinions  themselves  have  been  widely 
misapprehended,  perhaps  because  her  person- 
ality—  or  rather  that  imaginary  personage,  the 
George  Sand  of  the  myths  —  has  caused  a  con- 
fusion in  people's  minds  between  her  ideal 
standard  and  her  individual  success  in  keeping 
up  to  it.  We  would  not  ignore  the  importance 
of  personal  example  in  one  so  famous  as  her- 
self. We  may  pass  by  eccentricities  not  invit- 
ing to  imitation  ;  for  if  any  of  her  sex  ever 
thought  to  raise  themselves  any  nearer  to  the 
level  of  George  Sand  by  smoking  or  wearing 
men's  clothes,  such  puerility  does  not  call  for 
notice.  Still,  the  influence  she  strenuously 
exerted  for  good  as  a  writer  for  the  public 
would  have  worked  more  clearly  had  she  never 
seemed  to  swerve  from  the  high  principles  she 
expressed,  or  been  led  away  by  the  disturbing 
forces  of  a  nature  calm  only  on  the  surface. 
Nothing  is  more  baffling  than  the  incomplete 
revelations  of  a  very  complex  order  of  mind, 
with  its  many-sided  sympathies  and  its  apparent 
contradictions.  The  self -justification  she  puts 
forward  for  her  errors  is  sometimes  sophistical, 
but  not  for  that  insincere.  She  is  not  trying  to 


240  GEORGE  SAND. 

make  us  her  dupes ;  she  is  the  dupe  herself  of 
her  dangerous  eloquence.  But  her  moral  worth 
so  infinitely  outweighed  the  alloy  as  to  leave 
but  little  call,  or  even  warrant,  for  dwelling  on 
the  latter.  "  If  I  come  back  to  you,"  said  her 
old  literary  patron  Delatouche,  into  whose  disfa- 
vor she  had  fallen,  awhile,  when  he  came  years 
after  to  ask  for  the  restitution  of  the  friendship 
he  had  slighted,  "  it  is  that  I  cannot  help  my- 
self, and  your  qualities  surpass  your  defects." 

To  pass  from  herself  to  her  books,  no  one  has 
made  more  frank,  clear  and  unchanging  confes- 
sion of  their  heart's  faith  or  their  head's  princi- 
ples. Her  creed  was  that  which  has  been,  and 
ever  will  be  in  some  guise,  the  creed  of  minds 
of  a  certain  order.  She  did  not  invent  it. 
Poets,  moralists,  theologians,  have  proclaimed 
it  before  her  and  after  her.  She  found  for  it  a 
fresh  mode  of  expression,  one  answering  to  the 
needs  of  the  age  to  which  she  belonged. 

It  is  in  the  union  of  rare  artistic  genius  with 
an  almost  as  rare  and  remarkable  power  of 
enthusiasm  for  moral  and  spiritual  truth  that 
lies  her  distinguishing  strength.  Most  of  her 
novels  —  all  her  best  novels  —  share  this  char- 
acteristic of  seeming  to  be  prompted  by  the 
double  and  equal  inspiration  of  an  artistic  and  a 
moral  purpose.  Wherever  one  of  these  pre- 
ponderates greatly,  or  is  wanting  altogether, 
the  novel  falls  below  her  usual  standard. 


ARTIST  AND  MORALIST.  241 

For  in  several  qualities  reckoned  important 
her  work  is  open  to  criticism.  "  Plan,  or  the 
want  of  it,"  she  acknowledges,  with  a  sort  of 
complacency,  "has  always  been  my  weak  point." 
Thus  whilst  in  many  of  her  compositions, 
especially  the  shorter  novels,  the  construction 
leaves  little  to  be  desired,  Consnelo  is  only  one 
among  many  instances  in  which  all  ordinary 
rules  of  symmetry  and  proportion  are  set  at 
naught.  Sometimes  the  leading  idea  assumed 
naturally  and  easily  a  perfect  form ;  if  simple, 
as  in  ^w^/r/and  her  pastorals,  it  usually  did  so ; 
but  if  complex,  she  troubled  herself  little  over 
the  task  of  symmetrical  arrangement.  M.  Max- 
ime  Du  Camp  reports  that  she  said  to  him : 
"When  I  begin  a  novel  I  have  no  plan;  it 
arranges  itself  whilst  I  write,  and  becomes  what 
it  may."  This  fault  shocks  less  in  England, 
where  genius  is  apt  to  rebel  against  the  restric- 
tions of  form,  and  such  irregularity  has  been 
consecrated,  so  to  speak,  by  the  masterpieces 
of  the  greatest  among  our  imaginative  writers. 
And  even  the  more  precise  criticism  of  her 
countrymen  has  owned  that  this  carelessness 
works  by  no  means  entirely  to  her  disadvantage. 
In  rictions  more  faultless  as  literary  composi- 
tions the  reader,  whilst  struck  with  admiration 
for  the  art  with  which  the  whole  is  put  together, 
is  apt  to  lose  something  of  the  illusion  —  the 


242  GEORGE    SAND. 

impression  of  nature  and  conviction.  The 
faults  of  no  writer  can  be  more  truly  defined  as 
the  ctifauts  de  ses  qualitts  than  those  of  George 
Sand,  Shorn  of  her  spontaneity,  she  would 
indeed  be  shorn  of  her  strength.  We  are 
carried  along  by  the  pleasant,  easy  stream  of 
her  musical  eloquence,  as  by  an  orator  who 
knows  so  well  how  to  draw  our  attention  that 
we  forget  to  find  him  too  long.  Her  stories 
may  be  read  rapidly,  but  to  be  enjoyed  should 
be  read  through.  Dipped  into  and  their  parts 
taken  without  reference  to  the  whole,  they  can 
afford  comparatively  but  little  pleasure. 

In  translation  no  novelist  loses  more  than 
George  Sand,  —  who  has  so  much  to  lose ! 
The  qualities  sacrificed,  though  almost  intangi- 
ble, are  essential  to  the  force  of  her  charm. 
The  cement  is  taken  away  and  the  fabric  coheres 
imperfectly;  and  whilst  the  beauties  of  her 
manner  are  blurred,  its  blemishes  appear 
increased ;  the  lengthiness,  over-emphasis  of 
expression,  questionable  taste  of  certain  pas- 
sages, become  more  marked.  Although  never- 
theless many  of  her  tales  remain  pleasant  read- 
ing, they  suffer  as  much  as  translated  poetry, 
and  only  a  very  inadequate  impression  of  her 
art  as  a  novelist  can  be  arrived  at  from  any 
rendering  of  it  in  a  foreign  tongue. 

Her    dialogue    has    neither     brilliancy    nor 


ARTIST  AND  MORALIST.  243 

variety.  Her  characters  characterize  them- 
selves by  the  sentiments  they  express;  their 
manner  of  expression'is  somewhat  uniform  —  it 
is  the  manner  of  George  Sand;  and  although 
pleasant  humor  and  good-natured  fun  abound  in 
her  pages,  these  owe  none  of  their  attractions 
to  witty  sayings,  being  curiously  bare  of  a  bon 
mot  or  an  epigram. 

But  we  find  there  the  rarer  merits  of  a  poetic 
imagination,  a  vast  comprehension  of  nature, 
admirable  insight  into  human  character  and 
power  of  clear  analysis;  a  whole  science  of 
sentiment  and  art  of  narrative,  and  a  charm  of 
narrative  style  that  soothes  the  nerves  like 
music. 

She  has  given  us  a  long  gallery  of  portraits 
of  extraordinary  variety.  It  is  true  that  her 
creations  for  the  most  part  affect  us  rather  as 
masterly  portraits  than  as  living,  walking  men 
and  women.  This  is  probably  owing  to  the 
above-noted  sameness  of  style  of  dialogue,  and 
the  absence  generally  of  the  dramatic  quality  in 
her  novels.  On  the  other  hand  they  are  ex- 
tremely picturesque,  in  the  highest  sense, 
abounding  in  scenes  and  figures  which,  without 
inviting  to  the  direct  illustration  they  are  too 
vivid  to  need,  are  full  of  suggestions  to  the 
artist.  The  description  in  Teverino  of  Made- 
leine, the  bird-charmer,  kneeling  at  prayer 


244  GEORGE  SAND. 

in  the  rude  mountain  chapel,  or  outside  on  the 
rocks,  exercising  her  natural  magic  over  her 
feathered  friends ;  in  Jeanne,  of  the  shepherd- 
girl  discovered  asleep  on  the  Druidical  stones ; 
the  noon-day  rest  of  the  rustic  fishing-party  in 
Valentine  —  Benedict  seated  on  the  felled  ash- 
tree  that  bridges  the  stream,  Athena'fs  gather- 
ing field-flowers  on  the  banks,  Louise  flinging 
leaves  into  the  current,  Valentine  reclining 
dreamily  among  the  tall  river-reeds, — are  a  few 
examples  taken  at  random,  which  it  would  be 
easy  to  multiply  ad  infinitum. 

Any  classification  of  her  works  in  order  of 
time  that  professes  to  show  a  progressive 
change  of  style,  a  period  of  super-excellence  or 
of  distinct  decadence,  seems  to  us  somewhat 
fanciful.  From  Indiana  and  its  immediate 
successors,  denounced  by  so  many  as  fraught 
with  peril  to  the  morals  of  her  nation,  down  to 
Nanon  (1872),  which  might  certainly  carry  off 
the  prize  of  virtue  in  a  competition  in  any  coun- 
try, George  Sand  can  never  be  said  to  have 
entirely  abandoned  one  "  manner  "  for  another, 
or  for  any  length  of  time  to  have  risen  above  or 
sunk  below  a  certain  level  of  excellence.  Andre", 
extolled  by  her  latest  critics  as  "a  delicious 
eclogue  of  the  fields,"  was  contemporary  with 
the  bombastic,  false  Byronism  of  Jacques ;  the 
feeble  narrative  of  La  Mare  au  Diable  with  the 


ARTIST  AND  MORALIST.  245 

passion-introspection  of  Lucrezia  Floriani.  The 
ever-popular  Consuelo  immediately  succeeded 
the  feeble  Compagnon  du  Tour  de  France.  La 
Marquise,  written  in  the  first  year  of  her 
literary  life,  shows  a  power  of  projection  out  of 
herself,  and  of  delicate  analysis,  hardly  to  be 
surpassed ;  but  Francia,  of  forty  years'  later 
date,  is  an  equally  perfect  study.  From  the 
time  of  Indiana  onwards  she  continued  to  pro- 
duce at  the  rate  of  about  two  novels  a  year ; 
and  at  intervals,  rare  intervals,  the  product  was 
a  failure.  But  we  shall  find  her  when  approach- 
ing seventy  still  writing  on,  without  a  trace  of 
the  weakness  of  old  age. 

The  charge  of  "  unreality "  so  commonly 
brought  against  her  novels  it  may  be  well 
briefly  to  examine.  Such  little  fantasy-pieces 
in  Hoffmann's  manner  as  Le  CJiateau  dcs  D/- 
sertes,  Teverino,  and  others,  making  no  pretense 
to  be  exact  studies  of  nature,  cannot  fairly  be 
censured  on  this  head.  Like  fairy  tales  they 
have  a  place  of  their  own  in  art.  One  of  the 
prettiest  of  these  is  Les  Dames  Vertes,  in  which 
the  fable  seems  to  lead  us  over  the  borders  of 
the  supernatural ;  but  the  secret  of  the  mystifi- 
cation, well  kept  till  the  last,  is  itself  so  pleasing 
and  original  that  the  reader  has  no  disappoint- 
ing sense  as  of  having  had  a  hoax  played  upon 
his  imagination. 


246  GEORGE    SAND. 

In  character  drawing  no  one  can,  on  occasion, 
be  a  more  uncompromising  realist  than  George 
Sand.  Andre,  Horace,  Laurent  in  Elle  et  Lni, 
Pauline,  Gorilla,  Alida  in  Valvtdre,'  might  be 
cited  as  examples.  But  her  theory  was  unques- 
tionably not  the  theory  which  guides  the  mod- 
ern school  of  novel  writers.  She  wrote,  she 
states  explicitly,  for  those  "who  desire  to  find 
in  a  novel  a  sort  of  ideal  life."  She  made  this 
her  aim,  but  without  depreciation  of  the  widely 
different  aims  of  other  authors.  "  You  paint 
mankind  as  they  are,"  she  said  to  Balzac  ;  "  I, 
as  they  ought  to  be,  or  might  become.  You 
write  the  comedy  of  humanity.  I  should  like 
to  write  the  eclogue,  the  poem,  the  romance  of 
humanity."  She  has  been  taxed  with  flattering 
nature  and  human  nature  because  her  love  of 
beauty  —  defined  by  her  as  the  highest  expres- 
sion of  truth  —  dictated  her  choice  of  subjects. 
An  artist  who  paints  roses  paints  from  reality 
as  entirely  as  he  who  paints  mud.  Her  princi- 
ple was  to  choose  among  realities  those  which 
seemed  best  worth  painting. 

The  amount  of  idealization  in  her  peasant 
sketches  was  naturally  over-estimated  by  those 
who,  never  having  studied  the  class,  could  not 
conceive  of  a  peasant  except  conventionally,  as 
a  drunken  boor.  The  very  just  portrait  of 
Cecilia  Boccaferri,  the  conscientious  but  obscure 


ARTIST  AND  MORALIST.  247 

artist  in  Le  Chdteau  des  D/sertes,  might  seem 
over-flattered  to  such  as  imagine  that  all  opera- 
singers  must  be  persons  of  riotous  living.  The 
types  she  prefers  to  present,  if  exceptional,  are 
not  impossible  or  non-existent.  An  absolutely 
faultless  heroine,  such  as  Consuelo,  she  seldom 
attempts  to  bring  before  us ;  an  ideal  hero, 
never. 

Further,  even  when  the  idealism  is  greatest 
the  essence  is  true.  Her  most  fanciful  concep- 
tions, most  improbable  combinations,  seem  more 
natural  than  do  every-day  scenes  and  characters 
treated  by  inferior  artists.  This  is  only  partly 
due  to  the  inimitable  little  touches  of  nature 
that  renew  the  impression  of  reality  at  every 
page.  Her  imagination  modified  her  material, 
but  only  in  order  the  more  vividly  to  illustrate 
truths  positive  and  everlasting.  So  did  Shake- 
speare when  he  drew  Prospero  and  Miranda, 
Caliban  and  Ariel.  Art,  as  regarded  by  George 
Sand,  is  a  search  for  ideal  truth  rather  than  a 
study  of  positive  reality.  This  principle  deter- 
mined the  spirit  of  her  romances.  She  was  the 
highest  in  her  genre ;  let  the  world  decide 
which  genre  is  the  highest. 

When,  after  the  publication  of  Indiana,  Valen- 
tine, Lttia  and  Jacques,  the  moral  tendency  of 
her  works  was  so  sharply  attacked,  it  was  con- 
tended on  her  behalf  by  some  friendly  critics 


248  GEORGE    SAND. 

that  art  and  social  morality  have  no  necessary 
connection  —  a  line  of  defense  she  would  have 
been  the  last  to  take  up  for  herself.  In  the  pres- 
ent day  her  judges  complain  rather  of  her  inces- 
sant moralizing,  and  on  the  whole  with  more 
reason.  She  indignantly  denied  that  her  novels 
had  the  evil  tendencies  imputed  to  them.  Cer- 
tainly the  supposition  of  the  antagonistic  spirit 
of  her  writings  to  Christianity  and  marriage 
vanishes  in  proportion  to  the  reader's  acquaint- 
ance with  her  works.  But  against  certain  doc- 
trines and  practices  of  the  Roman  Catholic 
Church  which  she  believed  to  be  pernicious  in 
their  influence,  she  from  the  first  declared  war, 
and  by  her  frank  audacity  made  bitter  enemies. 
M.  Renan  relates  that  when  he  was  a  boy  of  fif- 
teen his  ecclesiastical  superiors  showed  him 
George  Sand,  emblematically  portrayed  for  the 
admonition  of  the  youth  under  their  care,  as 
a  woman  in  black  trampling  on  a  cross  !  Now, 
it  is  not  merely  that  her  own  faith  was  emi- 
nently Christian  in  character,  and  that  the 
Christian  ideal  seemed  to  her  the  most  perfect 
that  has  yet  presented  itself  to  the  mind  of  man; 
but  if  unable  to  accept  for  herself  the  doctrine 
of  revelation  as  commonly  interpreted,  she  is 
utterly  without  the  aggressiveness  of  spirit,  the 
petty  flippancy,  that  often  betray  the  intel- 
lectual bigot  under  the  banner  of  free  thought. 


ARTIST  AND  MORALIST.  249 

She  was  too  large-minded  to  incline  to  ridicule 
the  serious  convictions  of  earnest  seekers  for 
truth,  and  she  respected  all  sincerity  of  belief — 
all  faith  that  produced  beneficence  in  action. 

The  alleged  hostility  of  her  romances  to  mar- 
riage resumes  itself  into  a  declared  hostility  to 
the  conventional  French  system  of  match-mak- 
ing. Much  that  she  was  condemned  for  ventur- 
ing to  put  forward  we  should  simply  take  for 
granted  in  England,  where  —  whichever  system 
work  the  best  in  practice  —  to  the  strictest 
Philistine's  ideas  of  propriety  there  is  nothing 
unbecoming  in  a  love-match.  The  aim  and  end 
of  true  love  in  her  stories  is  always  marriage, 
whether  it  be  the  simple  attachment  of  Germain, 
the  field-laborer,  for  the  rustic  maiden  of  his 
choice,  the  romantic  predilection  of  the  rich 
young  widow  in  Pierre  qui  roule  for  the  hand- 
some actor  Laurence,  or  the  worship  of  Count 
Albert  for  the  cantatrice  Consuelo.  Her  ideal 
of  marriage  was,  no  doubt,  a  high  one,  "the 
indissoluble  attachment  of  two  hearts  fired  with 
a  like  love;"  a  love  "great,  noble,  beautiful, 
voluntary,  eternal."  Among  French  novelists 
she  should  rather  be  noted  for  the  extremely 
small  proportion  of  her  numerous  romances  that 
have  domestic  infelicity  for  a  theme. 

Her  remark  that  their  real  offense  was  that 
they  were  a  great  deal  too  moral  for  some  of 


250  GEORGE    SAND. 

their  critics,  hit  home,  inasmuch  as  in  her 
attack  on  the  ordinary  marriage  system  of 
France  she  struck  directly  at  the  fashionable 
immorality  which  is  its  direct  result,  and  which 
she  saw,  both  in  life  and  in  literature,  pass  free 
of  censure.  It  is  the  selfish  intriguer  who 
meets  with  least  mercy  in  her  pages,  and  who 
is  there  held  up,  not  only  to  dislike,  but  to 
ridicule. 

Persons  perplexed  by  the  fact  that  particular 
novels  of  hers  which,  judged  by  certain  theories, 
ought  to  be  morally  hurtful,  do  yet  produce  a 
very  different  effect,  have  accounted  for  it  in 
different  ways.  One  explains  it  by  saying  that 
if  there  is  poison  on  one  page  there  is  always 
the  antidote  on  the  next.  Another  observes 
that  a  certain  morality  of  misfortune  is  never 
absent  from  her  fictions.  In  other  words,  she 
nowhere  presents  us  with  the  spectacle  of  real 
happiness  reaped  at  the  expense  of  a  violation 
of  conscience.  And  in  the  rare  cases  where  the 
purpose  of  the  novel  seems  questionable,  she 
defeats  her  own  end.  For  truth  always  pre- 
ponderates over  error  in  her  conceptions,  and 
the  result  is  a  moral  effect. 

The  want  of  delicacy  that  not  unfrequently 
disfigures  her  pages  and  offends  us,  offends  also 
as  an  artistic  fault.  As  a  fact  it  is  taste  rather 
than  conscience  that  she  is  thus  apt  to  shock. 


ARTIST  AND  MORALIST.  2$l 

For  the  almost  passing  coarseness  of  expression 
or  thought  is  nothing  more  than  the  overflow, 
the  negligent  frankness  of  a  rich  and  active  but 
healthy  nature,  not  the  deliberate  obliquity  of  a 
corrupt  fancy  or  perverted  mind.  Such  un- 
reserve, unfortunately,  has  too  commonly  been 
the  transgression  of  writers  of  superabundant 
energy.  But  her  sins  are  against  outward  de- 
corum rather  than  against  the  principles  upon 
which  the  rules  of  decorum  are  based.  No  one 
was  better  capable  of  appreciating  and  indicat- 
ing with  fine  touches,  delicacy  and  niceties  of 
taste  and  feeling  in  others.  Her  sympathy 
with  such  sensitiveness  is  a  corrective  that 
should  render  harmless  what  might  vitiate  taste 
if  that  qualification  were  absent.  And  her 
stories,  though  including  a  very  few  instances 
where  the  subject  chosen  seems  to  most  Eng- 
lish minds  too  repulsive  to  admit  of  possible 
redemption,  and  the  frequent  incidental  intro- 
duction of  situations  and  frank  discussion  of 
topics  inadmissible  in  English  fiction  of  that 
period  —  an  honorable  distinction  it  seems  in 
some  danger  of  losing  in  the  present — can 
hardly  be  censured  from  the  French  standpoint, 
as  fair  critics  now  admit.  It  is  inconceivable 
that  a  public  could  be  demoralized  by  Indiana 
and  Valentine,  at  a  time  when  no  subject 
seemed  wicked  and  morbid  enough  to  satisfy 


252  GEORGE    SAND. 

popular  taste.  The  art  of  George  Sand  in  the 
main  was  sound  and  healthy,  and  in  flat  opposi- 
tion to  the  excesses  both  of  the  ultra-romantic 
and  ultra-realist  schools. 

Clear-sighted  critics,  perceiving  that  the  im- 
pression produced  by  her  works  is  not  one  to 
induce  men  and  women  to  defy  the  laws  of  their 
country,  nor  likely  to  undermine  their  religious 
faith,  have  gone  more  to  the  heart  of  the  mat- 
ter. The  dangerous  tendency  is  more  insidious, 
they  say,  and  more  general.  Virtue,  and  not 
vice,  is  made  attractive  in  her  books ;  but  it  is 
an  easy  virtue,  attained  without  self-conquest. 
All  her  characters,  good  and  bad,  act  alike  from 
impulse.  Those  who  seek  virtue  seek  pleasure 
in  so  doing,  and  her  philosophy  of  life  seems  to 
be  that  people  should  do  as  they  like.  The 
morality  she  commends  to  our  sympathy  and 
admiration  is  a  morality  of  instinct  and  emotion, 
not  of  reason  and  principle.  Self-renunciation, 
immolation  of  desire  in  obedience  to  accepted 
precept,  is  ignored.  Sentiment  is  supreme. 
Duty,  as  a  motive  power,  is  set  aside. 

George  Sand,  who  as  a  writer  from  first  to 
last  appeared  as  a  crusader  against  the  evil,  in- 
justice and  vice  that  darken  the  world,  did 
undoubtedly  choose  rather  to  speak  out  of  her 
heart  to  our  hearts,  than  out  of  her  head  to  our 
heads,  and  considered  moreover  that  such  was 


ARTIST  AND  MORALIST.  253 

the  more  effectual  way.  Her  idea  of  virtue  lay 
not  in  the  curbing  of  evil  instincts,  but  in  their 
conversion  or  modification  by  the  evoking  of 
good  impulses,  that  "  guiding  and  intensifying 
of  our  emotions  by  a  new  ideal "  which  has 
been  called  the  great  work  of  Christianity. 

It  is  not  —  or  not  in  the  first  place  —  that 
people  should  do  as  they  like,  but  that  they 
should  like  to  do  right ;  and  further,  that  human 
nature  in  that  ideal  life  the  sentiment  of  which 
pervades  her  works,  and  in  which  she  saw  "  no 
other  than  the  normal  life  as  we  are  called  to 
know  it,"  does  not  desire  what  is  hurtful  to  it. 

The  goodness  that  consists  in  doing  right  or 
refraining  from  doing  wrong  reluctantly,  or  in 
obedience  to  prescribed  rules,  or  from  mechan- 
ical habit,  had  for  her  no  life  or  charm.  The 
object  to  be  striven  for  should  be  nothing  less 
than  the  "perfect  harmony  of  inward  desire  and 
outward  obligation." 

Virtue  should  be  chosen,  though  we  seem  to 
sacrifice  happiness  ;  but  that  the  two  are  in  the 
beginning  identical,  that,  as  expressed  by  Mr. 
Herbert  Spencer,  "whether  perfection  of  nature, 
virtuousness  of  action,  or  rectitude  of  motive, 
be  assigned  as  the  proper  aim,  the  definition  of 
perfection,  virtue,  rectitude,  brings  us  down  to 
happiness  experienced  in  some  form,  at  some 
'time,  by  some  person  as  the  fundamental  idea," 


254  GEORGE    SAND. 

is  a  philosophic  truth  of  which  a  large  aperqu  is 
observable  in  the  works  of  George  Sand.  Self- 
sacrifice  should  spring  from  direct  desire, 
altruism  be  spontaneous  —  a  need  —  becoming 
a  second  and  better  nature ;  not  won  by  painful 
effort,  but  through  the  larger  development  of 
the  principle  of  sympathy.  Strong  in  her  own 
immense  power  of  sympathy,  she  applied  her- 
self to  the  task  of  awakening  and  extending 
such  sympathies  in  others.  This  she  does  by 
the  creation  of  agreeable,  interesting  and  noble 
types,  such  as  may  put  us  out  of  conceit  with 
what  is  mean  and  base.  Goodness,  as  under- 
stood and  portrayed  by  her,  must  recommend 
itself  not  only  to  the  judgment  but  to  the  heart. 
She  worked  to  popularize  high  sentiments,  and 
to  give  shape  and  reality  to  vague  ideas  of 
human  excellence.  Her  idea  of  virtue  as  a 
motive,  not  a  restraint,  not  the  controlling  of 
low  and  evil  desires,  but  tht  precluding  of  all 
temptations  to  yield  to  these,  by  the  calling  out 
of  stronger,  higher  desires,  so  far  from  being  a 
low  one,  is  indeed  the  very  noblest  ;  yet  not  on 
that  account  a  chimera  to  those  who  hold,  like 
her,  to  the  conviction  that  "  what  now  charac- 
terizes the  exceptionally  high  may  be  expected 
eventually  to  characterize  all.  For  that  which 
the  highest  human  nature  is  capable  of  is  within 
the  reach  of  human  nature  at  large."  "We 


ARTIST  AND  MORALIST.  255 

gravitate  towards  the  ideal,"  she  writes,  "  and 
this  gravitation  is  infinite,  as  is  the  ideal  itself." 
And  her  place  remains  among  those  few  great 
intelligences  who  can  be  said  to  have  given 
humanity  an  appreciable  impulse  in  the  direc- 
tion of  progress 


CHAPTER  XII 

LATER    YEARS. 

WHEN,  in  1869,  Madame  Sand  was  applied  to 
by  M.  Louis  Ulbach  —  a  literary  friend  who 
proposed  to  write  her  biography  —  for  some 
account  of  her  life  from  that  time  onwards 
where  her  memoirs  break  off,  she  replied,  in  a 
letter  now  appended  to  those  memoirs,  as 
follows  :  — 

For  the  last  five-and-twenty  years  there  is  nothing  more 
that  is  of  interest.  It  is  old  age,  very  quiet  and  very 
happy,  en  famille,  crossed  by  sorrows  entirely  personal 
in  their  nature  —  deaths,  defections,  and  then  the  general 
state  of  affairs  in  which  we  have  suffered,  you  and  I,  from 
the  same  causes.  My  time  is  spent  in  amusing  the 
children,  doing  a  little  botany,  long  walks  in  summer  —  I 
am  still  a  first-rate  pedestrian  —  and  writing  novels,  when 
I  can  secure  two  hours  in  the  daytime  and  two  in  the 
evening.  I  write  easily  and  witli  pleasure.  This  is  my 
recreation,  for  my  correspondence  is  numerous,  and  there 
lies  work  indeed!  If  one  had  none  but  one's  friends  to 
write  to  !  But  how  many  requests,  some  touching,  some 
impertinent !  Whenever  there  is  anything  I  can  do,  I 
reply.  Those  for  whom  I  can  do  nothing  I  do  not 
answer.  Some  deserve  that  one  should  try,  even  with 


LATER   YEARS.  257 

small  hope  of  succeeding.  Then  one  must  answer  that 
one  will  try.  All  this,  with  private  affairs  to  which  one 
must  really  give  attention  now  and  then,  makes  some  ten 
letters  a  day. 

The  old  age  of  George  Sand,  brighter,  fuller 
and  more  active  than  the  youth  of  most  men 
and  women,  was  in  itself  a  most  signal  proof  of 
the  stability  and  worth  of  her  mental  organiza- 
tion. Life,  which  deteriorates  a  frail  character, 
told  with  a  perfecting  and  elevating  power  upon 
hers. 

Of  her  earlier  personal  beauty  few  traces 
remained  after  middle  age  except  a  depth  of 
expression  in  her  eyes,  the  features  having 
become  thickened  by  age.  Some  among  those 
who,  like  Dickens,  first  saw  her  in  her  later 
years  and  still  looked  for  the  semblance  of  a 
heroine  of  romance,  failed  to  find  the  muse 
Lelia  of  their  imaginations  under  the  guise  of  a 
middle-aged  bonrgeoise.  But  such  impressions 
were  superficial.  Her  portrait  in  black  and 
white  by  Couture,  engraved  by  Manceau,  seems 
to  reconcile  these  apparent  discrepancies. 
Beauty  is  not  here,  but  the  face  is  so  powerful 
and  comprehensive  that  we  perceive  there  at 
once  the  mirror  of  a  mind  capable  of  embracing 
both  the  prose  and  the  poetry  of  life;  and  by 
many  this  portrait  is  preferred  to  the  earlier 
likenesses. 


258  GEORGE  SAND. 

Nor  is  there  anything  more  remarkable  in 
her  correspondence  than  the  extremely  inter- 
esting series  of  letters,  extending  from  Febru- 
ary, 1863,  to  within  three  months  of  her  death  in 
1876,  and  addressed  to  Gustave  Flaubert,  at 
this  period  her  familiar  friend.  The  intercourse 
of  two  minds  of  so  different  an  intellectual  and 
moral  order  as  those  of  the  authors  of  Consuelo 
and  of  Madame  Bovary  offers  to  all  a  curious 
study.  To  the  admirers  of  George  Sand  these 
letters  are  invaluable,  both  from  a  literary  point 
of  view  and  as  a  record  of  her  inner  life  from 
that  time  onwards,  when,  as  expressed  by  her- 
self, she  resolutely  buried  youth,  and  owned 
herself  the  gainer  by  an  increasing  calm  within. 
The  secret  of  her  future  happiness  she  found 
in  living  for  her  children  and  her  friends.  That 
she  retained  her  zest  for  intellectual  pleasures 
she  ascribed  to  the  very  fact  that  she  never 
allowed  herself  to  be  absorbed  for  long  in  these 
and  in  herself. 

"Artists  are  spoilt  children,"  she  writes  to 
Flaubert,  "  and  the  best  of  them  are  great  ego- 
ists. You  tell  me  I  love  them  too  well ;  I  love 
them  as  I  love  woods  and  fields,  all  things,  all 
beings  that  I  know  a  little  and  make  my  con- 
stant study.  In  the  midst  of  it  all  I  pursue  my 
calling  ;  and  how  I  love  that  calling  of  mine, 
and  all  that  nourishes  and  renovates  it !  " 


LATER    YEARS.  259 

We  must  now  take  up  the  thread  of  outward 
events  again,  which  we  have  slightly  antici- 
pated. 

In  the  autumn  of  1860  Madame  Sand  had  a 
severe  attack  of  typhoid  fever.  She  was  then 
on  the  point  of  beginning  her  little  tale,  La 
Famille  de  Germandre  ;  "/e  roman  de  mafihire" 
she  playfully  terms  it  afterwards,  when  retrac- 
ing the  circumstances  in  a  letter  to  her  old 
friend  Francois  Rollinat :  — 

The  day  before  that  upon  which  I  was  suddenly  taken 
very  seriously  ill,  I  had  felt  quite  well.  I  had  scribbled 
the  beginning  of  a  novel ;  I  had  placed  all  my  personages ; 
I  knew  them  thoroughly;  I  knew  their  situations  in  the 
world,  their  characters,  tendencies,  ideas,  relations  to 
each  other.  I  saw  their  faces.  All  that  remained  to  be 
known  was  what  they  were  going  to  do,  and  I  did  not 
trouble  my  head  about  that,  having  time  to  think  it  over 
to-morrow. 

Struck  down  on  the  morrow,  she  was  for 
many  days  in  a  precarious  condition  ;  and  in 
the  confused  fancies  of  fever  found  herself 
wandering  with  La  Famille  de  Germandre  about 
the  country,  alighting  in  ruined  castles,  and 
encountering  the  most  whimsical  adventures  in 
flood  and  field. 

It  would  have  been  an  easy  death,  she 
remarked  afterwards,  had  she  died  then,  as  she 
might,  in  her  dream ;  but  she  came  to  herself 


260  GEORGE  SAND. 

to  find  her  son  and  friends  in  such  anxiety  on 
her  account,  so  overjoyed  at  her  convalescence, 
that  she  could  not  but  be  glad  of  the  life  that 
was  given  back  to  her.  Early  in  1 86 1  we  find  her 
recruiting  her  forces  by  a  stay  at  Tamaris,  near 
Toulon,  completing  the  novel  interrupted  by 
illness;  resuming  her  long  walks  and  botanic 
studies,  and  thoroughly  enjoying  the  sense  of 
returning  vital  powers. 

She  stood  always  in  great  dread  of  the  idea 
of  possibly  losing  her  activity  as  she  advanced 
in  years.  The  infirmities  of  old  age,  however, 
she  was  happily  to  be  spared,  preserving  her 
energy  and  mental  faculties,  as  will  be  seen,  till 
just  before  her  death.  But  though  she  was 
restored  to  health  and  strength,  this  illness 
seems  to  have  left  its  traces  on  her  constitu- 
tion. 

Her  son's  marriage  to  Mdlle.  Calamatta, 
spoken  of  by  Madame  Sand  as  a  heart's  desire 
of  hers  at  length  fulfilled,  took  place  in  1862, 
not  many  months  after  his  return  from  half  a 
year  of  travel  in  Africa  and  America,  in  the 
company  of  Prince  Napoleon.  The  event  proved 
a  fresh  source  of  the  purest  happiness  to  her, 
and  was  not  to  separate  her  from  her  son.  The 
young  people  settled  at  Nohant,  which  remained 
her  headquarters.  There  a  few  years  later  we 
find  her  residing  almost  exclusively,  except 


LATER    YEARS.  261 

when  called  by  matters  of  business  to  her  pied- 
a-terre  in  Paris,  where  she  never  lingered  long. 
To  the  two  little  grand-daughters,  Aurore  and 
Gabrielle,  whom  she  saw  spring  up  in  her 
home,  she  became  passionately  devoted.  Most 
of  her  compositions  henceforward  are  dated  from 
Nohant,  where,  indeed,  more  than  fifty  years  of 
her  life  were  spent. 

As  regards  decorum  of  expression  and  tem- 
perance of  sentiments,  the  later  novels  of 
George  Sand  have  earned  more  praise  than 
censure ;  but  some  readers  may  feel  that  in 
fundamental  questions  of  taste  the  comparison 
between  them  and  their  forerunners  is  not 
always  entirely  to  their  advantage.  The  fer- 
vor of  youth  has  a  certain  purifying  power  to 
redeem  from  offense  matter,  even  though  over- 
frankly  treated,  which  becomes  disagreeable  in 
cold  analysis,  however  sober  the  wording,  and 
clear  and  admirable  the  moral  pointed. 

Mademoiselle  La  Quintinie,  which  appeared 
in  1863,  was  suggested  by  M.  Octave  Feuillet's 
Sibille.  The  point  of  M.  Feuillet's  novel  is, 
that  Sibille,  an  ardent  Catholic,  stifles  her  love, 
and  renounces  her  lover  on  account  of  his 
heterodox  opinions.  Madame  Sand  gives  us 
the  reverse  —  a  heroine  who  is  reflectively 
rather  than  mystically  inclined,  and  whose 
lover  by  degrees  succeeds  in  effecting  her  con- 


262  GEORGE   SAND. 

version  to  his  more  liberal  views.  Here,  as 
elsewhere,  the  author's  mind  shows  a  sym- 
pathetic comprehension  of  the  standpoint  of 
enlightened  Protestantism  curiously  rare  among 
those  who,  like  herself,  have  renounced  Roman- 
ism for  the  pursuit  of  free  thought  and  specula- 
tion. But  even  those  who  prefer  the  de'noA- 
ment  of  George  Sand's  novel  to  that  of  M. 
Feuillet's  will  not  rank  Mademoiselle  La  Quin- 
tinie  very  high  among  the  author's  productions. 
It  is  colorless, '  and  artistically  weak,  however 
controversially  strong. 

Madame  Sand,  according  to  her  own  reckon- 
ing in  1869,  had  made  at  least  ,£40,000  by  her 
writings.  Out  of  this  she  had  saved  no  fortune. 
She  had  always  preferred  to  live  from  day  to 
day  on  the  proceeds  of  her  work,  regulating  her 
expenses  accordingly,  trusting  her  brain  to 
answer  to  any  emergency  and  bring  her  out  of 
the  periodical  financial  crises  in  which  the  un- 
certainty of  literary  gains  and  the  liberality  of 
her  expenditure  involved  her.  She  continued 
fond  of  travelling,  especially  of  exploring  the 
nooks  and  corners  of  France,  felt  by  her  to  be 
less  well  known  than  they  deserve,  and  fully  as 
picturesque  as  the  spots  tourists  go  far  to  visit. 
Here  she  sought  fresh  frames  for  her  novels. 
"  If  I  have  only  three  words  to  say  about  a 
place,"  she  tells  us,  "  I  like  to  be  able  to  refer 


LATER   YEARS.  263 

to  it  in  my  memory  so  as  to  make  as  few  mis- 
takes as  possible." 

In  January,  1 869,  we  find  her  writing  of  her- 
self in  a  playful  strain  to  her  friend  Flau- 
bert :  - 

The  individual  called  George  Sand  is  quite  well,  enjoy- 
ing the  marvelous  winter  now  reigning  in  Berry,  gather- 
ing flowers,  taking  note  of  interesting  botanic  anomalies, 
stitching  at  dresses  and  mantles  for  her  daughter-in-law, 
costumes  for  the  marionettes,  dressing  dolls,  reading 
music,  but,  above  all,  spending  hours  with  little  Aurore, 
who  is  a  wonderful  child.  There  is  not  a  being  on  earth 
more  tranquil  and  happier  in  his  home  than  this  old 
troubadour  retired  from  business,  now  and  then  singing 
his  little  song  to  the  moon,  singing  well  or  ill  he  does 
not  particularly  care,  so  long  as  he  gives  the  motif  that 

is  running  in  his  head He  is  happy,  for  he 

is  at  peace,  and  can  find  amusement  in  everything. 

M.  Plauchut,  another  literary  friend  and  a 
visitor  at  Nohant  during  this  last  decade  of  her 
lifetime,  gives  a  picture  of  the  order  of  her  day  ; 
it  is  simplicity  itself. 

Nine  o'clock,  in  summer  and  in  winter  alike, 
was  her  hour  of  waking.  Letters  and  news- 
papers would  then  occupy  her  until  noon,  when 
she  came  down  to  join  the  family  d^jeiiner. 
Afterwards  she  would  stroll  for  an  hour  in  the 
garden  and  the  wood,  visiting  and  tending  her 
favorite  plants  and  flowers.  At  two  o'clock  she 
would  come  indoors  to  give  a  lesson  to  her  grand- 


264  GEORGE  SAND, 

children  in  the  library,  or  work  there  on  her 
own  account,  undistracted  by  the  romps  around 
her.  Dinner  at  six  was  followed  by  a  short 
evening  walk,  after  which  she  played  with  the 
children,  or  set  them  dancing  indoors.  She 
liked  to  sit  at  the  piano,  playing  over  to  herself 
bits  of  music  by  her  favorite  Mozart,  or  old 
Spanish  and  Berrichon  airs.  After  a  game  of 
domino'es  or  cards  she  would  still  sit  up  so  late, 
occupying  herself  with  water-color  painting  or 
otherwise,  that  sometimes  her  son  was  obliged 
to  take  away  the  lights.  These  long  evenings, 
the  same  writer  bears  witness,  sometimes  afford- 
ed rare  opportunities  of  hearing  Madam  Sand 
talk  of  the  events  and  the  men  of  her  time. 
In  the  absolute  quiet  of  the  country,  among  a 
small  circle  of  responsive  minds,  she,  so  silent 
otherwise,  became  expansive.  "Those  who 
have  never  heard  George  Sand  at  such  hours," 
he  concludes,  "have  never  known  her.  She 
spoke  well,  with  great  elevation  of  ideas,  charm- 
ing eloquence,  and  a  spirit  of  infinite  indul- 
gence." When  at  length  she  retired,  it  was  to 
write  on  until  the  morning  hours  according  to 
her  old  habit,  only  relinquished  when  her  health 
made  this  imperative. 

She  had  allowed  her  son  and  her  daughter-in- 
law  to  take  the  cares  of  household  management 
off  her  hands.  This  left  her  free,  as  she  ex- 


LATER    YEARS.  265 

pressed  it,  to  be  a  child  again,  to  hold  aloof 
from  things  immediate  and  transitory,  reserving 
her  thoughts  and  contemplations  for  what  is 
general  and  eternal.  She  found  a  poet's 
pleasure  in  abstracting  herself  from  human  life, 
saying:  "There  are  hours  when  I  escape  from 
myself,  when  I  live  in  a  plant,  when  I  feel  my- 
self grass,  a  bird,  a  tree-top,  a  cloud,  a  running 
stream."  Shaking  off,  as  it  were,  the  sense  of 
personality,  she  felt  more  freely  and  fully  the 
sense  of  kinship  with  the  life  and  soul  of  the 
universe. 

It  was  her  habit  every  evening  to  sum  up  in 
a  few  lines  the  impressions  of  the  day,  and  this 
journal,  for  the  conspicuous  absence  of  incident 
in  its  pages,  she  compares  to  the  log-book  of  a 
ship  lying  at  anchor.  But  one  terrible  and 
little  anticipated  break  in  its  tranquil  monotony 
was  yet  to  come. 

George  Sand  lived  to  see  her  country  pass 
through  every  imaginable  political  experience. 
Born  before  the  First  Republic  had  expired,  she 
had  witnessed  the  First  Empire,  the  restored 
Monarchy,  the  Revolution  of  1830,  the  reign  of 
Louis  Philippe,  the  convulsions  of  1848,  the 
presidency  of  Louis  Bonaparte,  and  the  Second 
Empire.  She  was  still  to  see  and  outlive  its 
fall,  the  Franco-German  War,  the  Commune, 
and  to  die,  as  she  was  born,  under  a  republic. 


266  GEORGE  SAND. 

To  some  of  her  friends  who  had  reproached 
her  with  showing  too  much  indulgence  for  the 
state  of  things  under  Imperial  rule,  she  replied 
that  the  only  change  in  her  was  that  she  had 
acquired  more  patience  in  proportion  as  more 
was  required.  The  regime  she  condemned  — 
and  amid  apparent  prosperity  had  foretold  the 
corrupting  influence  on  the  nation  of  the  estab- 
lished ideal  of  frivolity,  and  that  a  crash  of 
some  kind  must  ensue.  Her  judgment  on  the 
Emperor,  after  his  fall,  is  worth  noting,  if  only 
because  it  is  dispassionate.  Since  his  elevation 
to  the  Imperial  dignity  she  had  lost  all  old 
illusions  as  to  his  public  intentions.  With 
regard  to  these,  on  the  occasion  of  her  inter- 
views with  him  at  the  Elysee,  he  had  com- 
pletely deceived  her,  and  designedly,  she  had  at 
first  thought.  Nor  had  she  concealed  her 
disgust. 

I  left  Paris,  and  did  not  come  to  an  appointment  he 
had  offered  me.  They  did  not  tell  me  "  The  King  might 
have  had  to  wait!"  but  they  wrote  "The  Emperor 
waited."  However,  I  continued  to  write  to  him,  when- 
ever I  saw  hopes  of  saving  some  victim,  to  ponder  his 
answers  and  watch  his  actions ;  and  I  became  convinced 
that  he  did  not  intentionally  impose  upon  any  one.  He 
imposed  on  himself  and  on  everybody  else  ...  In  pri- 
vate life  he  had  genuine  qualities.  I  happened  to  see  in 
him  a  side  that  was  really  generous  and  sincere.  His 
dream  of  grandeur  for  France  was  not  that  of  a  sound 


LATER    YEARS.  267 

mind,  but  neither  of  an  ordinary  mind.  Really  France 
would  have  sunk  too  low  if  she  had  submitted  for  twenty 
years  to  the  supremacy  of  a  crdtin,  working  only  for  him- 
self. One  would  then  have  to  give  her  up  in  despair  for 
ever  and  ever.  The  truth  is  that  she  mistook  a  meteor 
for  a  star,  a  silent  dreamer  for  a  man  of  depth.  Then 
seeing  him  sink  under  disasters  he  ought  to  have  fore- 
seen, she  took  him  for  a  coward. 

George  Sand's  Journal  (fun  Voyageur  pendant 
la  guerre  has  a  peculiar  and  painful  interest.  It 
is  merely  a  note-book  of  passing  impressions 
from  September,  1870,  to  January,  1871  ;  but 
its  pages  give  a  most  striking  picture  of  those 
effects  of  war  which  have  no  place  in  military 
annals. 

The  army  disasters  of  the  autumn  were  pre- 
ceded by  natural  calamities  of  great  severity. 
The  heat  of  the  summer  in  Berry  had  been 
tremendous,  and  Madame  Sand  describes  the 
havoc  as  unprecedented  in  her  experience  — 
the  flowers  and  grass  killed,  the  leaves  scorched 
and  yellowed,  the  baked  earth  under  foot  literally 
cracking  in  many  places ;  no  water,  no  hay,  no 
harvest,  but  destructive  cattle-plague,  forest- 
fires  driving  scared  wolves  to  seek  refuge  in  the 
courtyard  of  Nohant  itself  —  the  remnant  of 
corn  spared  by  the  sun,  ruined  by  hail-storms. 
She  and  all  her  family  had  suffered  from  the 
unhealthiness  of  the  season.  Thus  the  political 


268  GEORGE    SAND. 

catastrophe  found  her  already  weakened  by 
anxiety  and  fatigue,  and  feeling  greatly  the 
effort  to  set  to  work  again.  Finally,  an  out- 
break of  malignant  small-pox  in  the  village 
forced  her  to  take  her  little  grandchildren  and 
their  mother  from  Nohant  out  of  reach  of  the 
infection.  September  and  October  were  passed 
at  or  in  the  neighborhood  of  Boussac,  a  small 
town  some  thirty  miles  off.  Sedan  was  over, 
and  the  worst  had  begun ;  the  protracted  sus- 
pense, the  long  agony  of  hope. 

Those  suffered  most  perhaps  who,  like  her- 
self, had  to  wait  in  enforced  inaction,  amid  the 
awful  dead  calm  that  reigned  in  the  provinces, 
yet  forbidden  to  forget  their  affliction  for  a 
moment.  The  peasant  was  gone  from  the  land  — 
only  the  old  and  infirm  were  left  to  look 
after  the  flocks,  to  till  and  sow  the  field.  Ma- 
dame Sand  notes,  and  with  a  kind  of  envy,  the 
stolid  patience  and  industry,  the  inextinguisha- 
ble confidence,  of  poor  old  Jacques  Bonhomme 
when  things  are  at  the  worst.  "  He  knows 
that  in  one  way  or  another  it  is  he  who  will 
have  to  pay  the  expenses  of  the  war ;  he  knows 
next  winter  will  be  a  season  of  misery  and 
want,  but  he  believes  in  the  spring"  —  in  the 
bounty  of  nature  to  repair  war's  ravages. 

During  this  time  of  unimaginable  trouble 
some  of  the  strongest  minds  were  unhinged. 


LATER    YEARS.  269 

It  is  no  small  honor  to  George  Sand  that  hers 
should  have  preserved  its  balance.  The  pages 
of  this  journal  are  distinguished  throughout  by 
a  wonderful  calm  of  judgment  and  an  equitable 
tone  —  not  the  calm  of  indifference,  but  of  a 
broad  and  penetrating  intelligence,  no  longer 
to  be  blinded  by  the  wild  excitement  and  pas- 
sions of  the  moment,  or  exalted  by  childish 
hopes  one  hour  to  be  thrust  into  the  madness 
of  despair  the  next. 

Although  tempted  now  and  then  to  regret 
that  she  had  recovered  from  her  illness  ten 
years  ago,  surviving  but  to  witness  the  abase- 
ment of  France,  she  was  not,  like  others,  panic- 
struck  at  the  prospect  of  invasion,  as  though 
this  meant  the  end  of  their  country.  "  It  will 
pass  like  a  squall  over  a  lake,"  she  said. 

But  it  was  a  time  when  they  could  be  sure  of 
nothing  except  of  their  distress.  The  telegraph 
wires  were  cut  ;  rumors  of  good  news  they 
feared  to  believe  would  be  succeeded  by  tales  of 
horror  they  feared  to  discredit.  Tidings  would 
come  that  three  hundred  thousand  of  the  enemy 
had  been  disposed  of  in  a  single  engagement 
and  King  William  taken  prisoner ;  then  of 
fatal  catastrophes  befallen  to  private  friends  — 
stories  which  often  proved  equally  unfounded. 

She  had  friends  shut  up  in  Paris  of  whom 
she  knew  not  whether  they  were  alive  or  dead. 


2/0  GEORGE  SAND. 

The  strain  of  anxiety  and  painful  excitement 
made  sleep  impossible  to  her  except  in  the  last 
extremity  of  fatigue.  Yet  she  had  her  little 
grandchildren  to  care  for ;  and  when  they  came 
around  her,  clamoring  for  the  fairy  tales  she 
was  used  to  supply,  she  contented  them  as  well 
as»she  could  and  gave  them  their  lessons  as 
usual,  anxious  to  keep  them  from  realizing  the 
sadness  the  causes  of  which  they  were  too 
young  to  understand. 

It  was  the  first  time  that  she  had  known  a 
distress  that  forbade  her  to  find  a  solace  in 
nature.  She  describes  how  one  day,  walking 
out  with  some  friends  and  following  the  course 
of  the  river  Tarde,  she  had  half  abandoned  her- 
self to  the  enjoyment  of  the  scene  —  the  cas- 
cade, the  dragon-flies  skimming  the  surface, 
the  purple  scabious  flowers,  the  goats  clamber- 
ing on  the  boulders  of  rock  that  strewed  the 
borders  and  bed  of  the  stream  —  when  one  of 
the  party  remarks :  "  Here's  a  retreat  pretty 
well  fortified  against  the  Prussians." 

And  the  present,  forgotten  for  an  instant  in 
reverie,  came  back  upon  her  with  a  shock. 

Letters  in  that  district  took  three  or  four 
days  to  travel  thirty  miles.  Newspapers  were 
rarely  to  be  procured ;  and  when  procured, 
made  up  of  contradictions,  wild  suggestions, 
and  the  pretentious  speeches  of  national  lead- 


LATER    YEARS.  271 

ers,  meant  to  be  reassuring,  but  marked  by  a 
vagueness  and  violence  from  which  Madame 
Sand  rightly  augured  ill. 

The  red-letter  days  were  those  that  brought 
communications  from  their  friends  in  Paris  by 
the  aerial  post.  On  October  11,  two  balloons, 
respectively  called  "  George  Sand "  and  the 
"Armand  Barbes,"  left  the  capital.  "My 
name,"  she  remarks,  "did  not  bring  good  luck 
to  the  first  —  which  suffered  injuries  and  de- 
scended with  difficulty,  yet  rescued  the  Ameri- 
cans who  had  gone  up  in  it."  The  "Barbes" 
had  a  smoother  but  a  more  famous  flight ;  alight- 
ing and  depositing  M.  Gambetta  safely  at 
Tours. 

As  the  autumn  advanced  Madame  Sand  and 
her  family  were  enabled  to  return  to  Nohant. 
But  what  a  return  was  that !  The  enemy  were 
quartered  within  forty  miles,  at  Issoudun ;  the 
fugitives  thence  were  continually  seen  passing, 
carrying  off  their  children,  their  furniture  and 
their  merchandise  to  places  of  security.  Al- 
ready the  enemy's  guns  were  said  to  have  been 
heard  at  La  Chatre.  Madame  Sand  walked  in 
her  garden  daily  among  her  marigolds,  snap- 
dragon and  ranunculus,  making  curious  specula- 
tions as  to  what  might  be  in  store  for  herself 
and  her  possessions.  She  remarks  :  — 

You  get  accustomed  to  it,  even  though  you  have  not 
the  consolation  of  being  able  to  offer  the  slightest  resist- 


2/2  GEORGE    SAND. 

ance.  ...  I  look  at  my  garden,  I  dine,  I  play  with 
the  children,  whilst  waiting  in  expectation  of  seeing  the 
trees  felled  roots  upwards  ;  of  getting  no  more  bread  to 
eat,  and  of  having  to  carry  my  grandchildren  off  on  my 
shoulders  ;  for  the  horses  have  all  been  requisitioned.  I 
work,  expecting  my  scrawls  to  light  the  pipes  of  the 
Prussians. 

But  the  enemy,  though  so  near,  never  passed 
the  boundaries  of  the  "Black  Valley."  The  de- 
partment of  the  Indre  remained  uninvaded, 
though  compassed  on  all  sides  by  the  foreign 
army ;  and  George  Sand  was  able  to  say  after- 
wards that  she  at  least  had  never  seen  a  Prus- 
sian soldier. 

A  sad  Christmas  was  passed.  On  the  last 
night  of  1870  a  meeting  of  friends  at  Nohant 
broke  up  with  the  parting  words,  "All  is  lost  !" 

"The  execrable  year  is  out,"  writes  Madame 
Sand,  "  but  to  all  appearances  we  are  entering 
upon  a  worse." 

On  the  1 5th  of  January,  1871,  her  little  drama 
Francois  le  CJiampi,  first  represented  in  the 
troublous  months  of  1849,  was  acted  in  Paris 
for  the  benefit  of  an  ambulance.  She  notes  the 
singular  fate  of  this  piece  to  be  reproduced  in 
time  of  bombardment.  A  pastoral  ! 

The  worst  strain  of  suspense  ended  January 
29,  with  the  capitulation  of  Paris.  Here  the 
Journal  d'uu  Voyagetir  breaks  off.  It  would  be 
sad  indeed  had  her  life,  like  that  of  more  than 


LATER    YEARS.  273 

one  of  her  compeers,  closed  then  over  France  in 
mourning.  Although  it  was  impossible  but  that 
such  an  ordeal  must  have  impaired  her  strength, 
she  outlived  the  war's  ending,  and  the  horrible 
social  crisis  which  she  had  foreseen  must  suc- 
ceed the  political  one.  Happier  than  Prosper 
Merimee,  than  Alexandre  Dumas,  and  others, 
she  saw  the  dawn  of  a  new  era  of  prosperity  for 
her  country,  whose  vital  forces,  as  she  had  also 
foretold,  were  to  prevail  in  the  end  over  succes- 
sive ills  —  the  enervation  of  corruption,  of  mili- 
tary disaster,  and  the  "orgie  of  pretended 
renovators  'J  at  home,  that  signalized  the  first 
months  of  peace  abroad. 

In  January,  1872,  we  again  find  her  writing 
cheerily  to  Flaubert ;  — 

Mustn't  be  ill,  mustn't  be  cross,  my  old  troubadour. 
Say  that  France  is  mad,  humanity  stupid,  and  that  we 
are  unfinished  animals  every  one  of  us,  you  must  love  on 
all  the  same,  yourself,  your  race,  above  all,  your  friends. 
I  have  my  sad  hours.  I  look  at  my  blossoms,  those  two 
little  girls  smiling  as  ever,  their  charming  mother,  and 
my  good,  hard-working  son,  whom  the  end  of  the  world 
•will  find  hunting,  cataloguing,  doing  his  daily  task,  and 
yet  as  merry  as  Punch  in  his  rare  leisure  moments. 

In  a  later  letter  she  writes  in  a  more  serious 
strain :  — 

I  do  not  say  that  humanity  is  on  the  road  to  the  heights ; 
I  believe  it  in  spite  of  all,  but  I  do  not  argue  about  it, 


274  GEORGE  SAND. 

which  is  U3eless,  for  every  one  judges  according  to  his 
own  eyesight,  and  the  general  outlook  at  the  present 
moment  is  ugly  and  poor.  Besides,  I  do  not  need  to  be 
assured  of  the  salvation  of  our  planet  and  its  inhabitants 
in  order  to  believe  in  the  necessity  of  the  good  and  the 
beautiful ;  if  our  planet  departs  from  this  law  it  will  per- 
ish ;  if  its  inhabitants  discard  it  they  will  be  destroyed. 
As  for  me,  I  wish  to  hold  firm  till  my  last  breath,  not  with 
the  certainty  or  the  demand  to  find  a  "  good  place"  else- 
where, but  because  my  sole  pleasure  is  to  maintain  myself 
and  mine  in  the  upward  way. 

The  last  five  years  of  her  life  saw  her  pen  in 
full  activity.  In  the  Revue  des  Deux  Mondes, 
Malgre"tout,  the  novel  of  1870,  was  succeeded  by 
Flamarande  and  Les  Deux  Freres  —  composi- 
tions executed  with  unflagging  energy  and  ani- 
mation of  style ;  La  Tour  de  Percemont,  and  a 
series  of  graceful  fairy-stories  entitled  Conies 
d'ttne  grand1  mere.  Nanon  (1872),  a  rustic  ro- 
mance of  the  First  Revolution,  is  a  highly 
remarkable  little  work,  possibly  suggested  by 
her  recent  experiences  of  the  effect  of  public 
disturbances  on  remote  country  places. 

She  was  also  a  constant  contributor  to  the 
newspaper  Le  Temps.  A  critical  notice  by  her 
hand  of  M.  Kenan's  Dialogues  et  Fragments 
Philosophiques,  reprinted  from  those  columns, 
bears  date  May,  1876,  immediately  before  she 
succumbed  to  the  illness  which  in  a  few  days 
was  to  cut  short  her  life. 


LATER   YEARS.  2?$ 

At  the  beginning  of  this  year  she  had  written 
on  this  subject  to  Flaubert,  in  the  brave  spirit 
she  would  fain  impart  to  her  weaker  breth- 
ren :  — 

Life  is  perhaps  eternal,  and  work  in  consequence  eter- 
nal. If  so,  let  us  finish  our  march  bravely.  If  otherwise, 
if  the  individual  perish  utterly,  let  us  have  the  honor  of 
having  done  our  task.  That  is  duty,  for  our  only  obvious 
duties  are  to  ourselves  and  our  fellow-creatures.  What 
we  destroy  in  ourselves  we  destroy  in  them.  Our  abase- 
ment abases  them;  our  falls  drag  them  down  ;  we  owe  to 
them  to  stand  fast,  to  save  them  from  falling.  The 
desire  to  die  early  is  a  weakness,  as  is  the  desire  to  live 
long. 

George  Sand,  like  most  persons  of  an  excep- 
tional constitution,  had  little  faith  in  the  efficacy 
for  herself  of  medical  science.  She  was  per- 
suaded that  the  prescribed  remedies  did  her 
more  harm  than  good,  and  on  more  than  one 
occasion,  when  her  health  had  caused  her  chil- 
dren uneasiness,  they  had  had  to  resort  to  an 
affectionate  ruse  to  induce  her  to  take  advice. 
Her  habit  of  disregarding  physical  ailments, 
fighting  against  them  as  a  weakness,  and  work- 
ing on  in  their  despite,  led  her  to  neglect  for 
too  long  failing  health  that  should  have  been 
attended  to.  During  the  whole  of  May,  1876, 
Madame  Sand,  though  suffering  from  real  ill- 
ness, continued  to  join  in  the  household  routine 


2/6  GEORGE    SAND. 

and  to  proceed  with  her  literary  work  as  usual. 
Not  till  the  last  days  of  the  month  did  she, 
unable  any  longer  to  make  light  of  her  danger, 
at  length  consent  to  send  for  professional 
advice.  It  was  then  too  late.  She  was  suffer- 
ing from  internal  paralysis.  The  medical  atten- 
tion which,  sought  earlier,  might,  in  the  opinion 
of  the  doctors,  have  prolonged  her  life  for  years, 
could  now  do  nothing  to  avert  the  imminent 
fatal  consequences  of  her  illness.  "  It  is  death," 
she  said  ;  "  I  did  not  ask  for  it,  but  neither  do 
I  regret  it."  For  beyond  the  sorrow  of  parting 
it  had  no  particular  terrors  for  her ;  she  had 
viewed  and  could  meet  it  in  another  spirit. 
"Death  is  no  more,"  she  had  written;  "  it  is 
life  renewed  and  purified." 

She  lingered  for  a  week,  in  great  suffering, 
but  bearing  all  with  fortitude  and  an  unflinching 
determination  not  to  distress  those  around  her 
by  painful  complaining.  Up  to  her  last  hour 
she  preserved  consciousness  and  lucidity.  The 
words,  "  Ne  tonchez  pas  a  la  verdure,"  among 
the  last  that  fell  from  her  lips,  were  understood 
by  her  children,  who  knew  her  wish  that  the 
trees  should  be  undisturbed  under  which,  in  the 
village  cemetery,  she  was  soon  to  find  a  resting- 
place —  a  wish  that  had  been  sacredly  respected. 

Her  suffering  ceased  a  short  while  before 
death,  which  came  to  her  so  quietly  that  the 


LATER    YEARS.  277 

transition  was  almost  imperceptible  to  the 
watchers  by  her  side.  It  was  on  the  morning 
of  the  8th  of  June.  She  was  within  a  month 
of  completing  her  seventy-second  year.  Al- 
though her  life's  work  had  long  since  been 
mainly  accomplished,  yet  the  extinction  of  that 
great  intelligence  was  felt  by  many — as  fitly 
expressed  by  M.  Renan  —  "  like  a  diminution  of 
humanity." 

Two  days  later  she  was  buried  in  the  little 
cemetery  of  Nohant,  that  adjoins  her  own 
garden  wall.  The  funeral  was  conducted  with 
extreme  simplicity,  in  accordance  with  her  taste 
and  spirit.  The  scene  was  none  the  less  a 
memorable  one.  The  rain  fell  in  torrents,  but 
no  one  seemed  to  regard  it ;  the  country-people 
flocking  in  from  miles  around,  old  men  standing 
bare-headed  for  hours,  heedless  of  the  deluge. 
The  peasant  and  the  prince,  Parisian  leaders  of 
the  world  of  thought  and  letters,  and  the  hum- 
blest and  most  unlearned  of  her  poorer  neigh- 
bors, stood  together  over  her  grave. 

Six  peasants  carried  the  bier  from  the  house 
to  the  church,  a  few  paces  distant.  The  village 
priest  came,  preceded  by  three  chorister-boys 
and  the  venerable  singing-clerk  of  the  parish,  to 
perform  the  ceremony.  A  portion  of  the  little 
churchyard,  railed  off  from  the  rest  and  planted 
with  evergreen-trees,  contains  the  graves  of  her 


278  GEORGE  SAND. 

grandmother,  her  father,  and  the  two  little 
grandchildren  she  had  lost.  A  plain  granite 
tomb  in  their  midst  now  marks  the  spot  where 
George  Sand  was  laid,  literally  buried  in 
flowers. 

A  great  spirit  was  gone  from  the  world ;  and 
a  good  spirit,  it  will  be  generally  acknowledged  : 
an  artist  in  whose  work  the  genuine  desire  to 
leave  those  she  worked  for  better  than  she 
found  them,  is  one  inspiring  motive.  Such 
endeavor  may  seem  to  fail,  and  she  affirmed : 
"  A  hundred  times  it  does  fail  in  its  immediate 
results.  But  it  helps,  notwithstanding,  to  pre- 
serve that  tradition  of  good  desires  and  of  good 
deeds,  without  which  all  would  perish." 


GEORGE     SAND. 

BY  JUSTIN    M'CARTHY. 


Reprinted  from  "  The  Galaxy"  for  May,  1870. 


V\7"E  are  all  of  us  probably  inclined,  now  and  then,  to 
waste  a  little  time  in  vaguely  speculating  on  what 
might  have  happened  if  this  or  that  particular  event  had 
not  given  a  special  direction  to  the  career  of  some  great 
man  or  woman.  If  there  had  been  an  inch  of  difference 
in  the  size  of  Cleopatra's  nose  ;  if  Hannibal  had  not  lin- 
gered at  Capua  ;  if  Cromwell  had  carried  out  his  idea  of 
emigration ;  if  Napoleon  Bonaparte  had  taken  service 
under  the  Turk,  —  and  so  on  through  all  the  old  familiar 
illustrations  dear  to  the  minor-  essayist  and  the  debating 
society.  I  have  sometimes  felt  tempted  thus  to  lose  my- 
self in  speculating  on  what  might  have  happened  if  the 
woman  whom  all  the  world  knows  as  George  Sand  had 
been  happily  married  in  her  youth  to  the  husband  of  her 
choice.  Would  she  ever  have  taken  to  literature  at  all? 
Would  she,  loving  as  she  does,  and  as  Frenchwomen  so 
rarely  do,  the  changing  face  of  inanimate  nature,  —  the 
fields,  the  flowers  and  the  brooks,  —  have  lived  a  peace- 


a  GEORGE  SAND. 

ful  and  obscure  life  in  some  happy  country  place,  and 
been  content  -with  home,  and  family,  and  love,  and  never 
thought  of  fame?  Or  if,  thus  happily  married,  she  still 
had  allowed  her  genius  to  fiud  an  expression  in  liter- 
ature, would  she  have  written  books  with  no  passionate 
purpose  in  them,  —  books  which  might  have  seemed 
like  those  of  a  good  Miss  Mulock  made  perfect,  —  books 
which  Podsnap  might  have  read  with  approval,  and  put 
•without  a  scruple  into  the  hands  of  that  modest  young 
person,  his  daughter?  Certainly  one  cannot  but  think 
that  a  different  kind  of  early  life  would  have  given  a 
quite  different  complexion  to  the  literary  individuality  of 
George  Sand. 

Bulwer  Lytton,  in  one  of  his  novels,  insists  that  true 
genius  is  always  quite  independent  of  the  individual  suf- 
ferings or  joys  of  its  possessor,  and  describes  some 
inspired  youth  in  the  novel  as  sitting  down,  while  sorrow- 
is  in  his  heart,  and  hunger  gnawing  at  his  vitals,  to 
throw  off  a  sparkling  and  gladsome  little  fairy  tale. 
Now  this  is  undoubtedly  true,  in  general,  of  any  high 
order  of  genius ;  but  there  are  at  least  some  great  and 
striking  exceptions.  Rousseau  and  Byron  are,  in  modern 
days,  remarkable  illustrations  of  genius,  admittedly  of  a 
very  high  rank,  governed  and  guided  almost  wholly  by 
the  individual  fortunes  of  the  men  themselves.  So,  too, 
must  we  speak  of  the  genius  of  George  Sand.  Not 
Rousseau,  not  even  Byron,  was  in  this  sense  more  ego- 
tistic than  the  woman  who  broke  the  chains  of  her  ill- 
assorted  marriage  with  a  crash  that  made  its  echoes 
heard  at  last  in  every  civilized  country  in  the  world. 
Just  as  people  are  constantly  quoting  nous  avons  change 
tout  cela  who  never  read  a  page  of  Moliere,  or  pour  en- 
courager  les  autres  without  even  being  aware  that  there 


GEORGE  SAND.  3 

is  a  story  of  Voltaire's  called  "  Candide,"  so  there  have 
been  thousands  of  passionate  protests  uttered  in  America 
and  Europe,  for  the  last  twenty  years,  by  people  who 
never  saw  a  volume  of  George  Sand,  and  yet  are  only 
echoing  her  sentiments  and  even  repeating  her  words. 

In  a  former  number  of  The  Galaxy,  I  expressed 
casually  the  opinion  that  George  Sand  is  probably  the 
most  influential  writer  of  our  day.  I  am  still,  and  delib- 
erately, of  the  same  opinion.  It  must  be  remembered 
that  very  few  English  or  American  authors  have  any 
•wide  or  deep  influence  over  peoples  who  do  not  speak 
English.  Even  of  the  very  greatest  authors  this  is  true. 
Compare,  for  example,  the  literary  dominion  of  Shake- 
speare with  that  of  Cervantes.  All  nations  who  read 
Shakespeare  read  Cervantes :  in  Stratford-upon-Avon 
itself  Don  Quixote  is  probably  as  familiar  a  figure  in 
people's  minds  as  FalstafF;  but  Shakespeare  is  little 
known  indeed  to  the  vast  majority  of  readers  in  the 
country  of  Cervantes,  in  the  land  of  Dante,  or  in  that 
of  Racine  and  Victor  Hugo.  In  something  of  the  same 
•way  we  may  compare  the  influence  of  George  Sand  with 
that  of  even  the  greatest  living  authors  of  England  and 
America.  What  influence  has  Charles  Dickens  or 
George  Eliot  outside  the  range  of  the  English  tongue? 
But  George  Sand's  genius  has  been  felt  as  a  power  in 
every  country  of  the  world  where  people  read  any  man- 
ner of  books.  It  has  been  felt  almost  as  Rousseau's 
once  was  felt ;  it  has  aroused  anger,  terror,  pity,  or 
•wild  and  rapturous  excitement  and  admiration  ;  it  has 
rallied  around  it  every  instinct  in  man  or  woman  which 
is  revolutionary ;  it  has  ranged  against  it  all  that  is  con- 
servative. It  is  not  so  much  a  literary  influence  as  a 
great  disorganizing  force,  riving  the  rocks  of  custom, 


4  GEORGE  SAND* 

resolving  into  their  original  elements  the  social  combi- 
nation which  tradition  and  convention  would  declare  to  be 
indissoluble.  I  am  not  now  speaking  merely  of  the  sen- 
timents which  George  Sand  does  or  did  entertain  on  the 
subject  of  marriage.  Divested  of  all  startling  effects 
and  thrilling  dramatic  illustrations,  these  sentiments 
probably  amounted  to  nothing  more  dreadful  than  the 
belief  that  an  unwedded  union  between  two  people  who 
love  and  are  true  to  each  other  is  less  immoral  than  the 
legal  marriage  of  two  uncongenial  creatures  who  do  not 
love  and  probably  are  not  true  to  each  other.  But  the 
grand,  revolutionary  idea  which  George  Sand  announced 
was  that  of  the  social  independence  and  equality  of 
woman,  —  the  principle  that  woman  is  not  made  for  man 
in  any  other  sense  than  as  man  is  made  for  woman. 
For  the  first  time  in  the  history  of  the  world  womau 
spoke  out  for  herself  with  a  voice  as  powerful  as  that  of 
man.  For  the  first  time  in  the  history  of  the  world 
woman  spoke  out  as  woman,  not  as  the  servant,  the 
satellite,  the  pupil,  the  plaything,  or  the  goddess  of  man. 
Now,  I  intend  at  present  to  write  of  George  Sand 
rather  as  an  individual,  or  an  influence,  than  as  the 
author  of  certain  works  of  fiction.  Criticism  would  now 
be  superfluously  bestowed  on  the  literary  merits  and 
peculiarities  of  the  great  woman  whose  astonishing  intel- 
lectual activity  has  never  ceased  to  produce,  during  the 
last  thirty  years,  works  which  take  already  a  classical 
place  in  French  literature.  If  any  reputation  of  our  day 
may  be  looked  upon  as  established,  we  may  thus  regard 
the  reputation  of  George  Sand.  She  is,  beyond  com- 
parison, the  greatest  living  novelist  of  France.  She  has 
won  this  position  by  the  most  legitimate  application  of 
the  gifts  of  an  artist.  With  all  her  marvellous  fecundity, 


GEORGE   SAND.  5 

she  has  hardly  ever  given  to  the  world  any  work  which 
does  not  seem,  at  least,  to  have  been  the  subject  of  the 
most  elaborate  and  patient  care.  The  greatest  tempta- 
tion which  tries  a  story-teller  is  perhaps  the  temptation 
to  rely  on  the  attractiveness  of  story-telling,  and  to  pay 
little  or  no  attention  to  style.  Walter  Scott's  prose,  for 
example,  if  regarded  as  mere  prose,  is  rambling,  irreg- 
ular, and  almost  worthless.  Dickens's  prose  is  as  bad  a 
model  for  imitation  as  a  musical  performance  which  is 
out  of  tune.  Of  course,  I  need  hardly  say  that  attention 
to  style  is  almost  as  characteristic  of  French  authors  in 
general,  as  the  lack  of  it  is  characteristic  of  English 
authors  ;  but,  even  in  France,  the  prose  of  George  Sand 
stands  out  conspicuous  for  its  wonderful  expressiveness 
and  force,  its  almost  perfect  beauty.  Then,  of  all 
modern  French  authors,  —  I  might,  perhaps,  say  of  all 
modern  novelists  of  any  country,  —  George  Sand  has 
added  to  fiction,  has  annexed  from  the  worlds  of  reality 
and  of  imagination  the  greatest  number  of  original  char- 
acters, —  of  what  Emerson  calls  new  organic  creations. 
Moreover,  George  Sand  is,  after  Rousseau,  the  one  only 
great  French  author  who  has  looked  directly  and  lov- 
ingly into  the  face  of  Nature,  and  learned  the  secrets 
which  skies  and  waters,  fields  and  lanes,  can  teach  to 
the  heart  that  loves  them.  Gifts  such  as  these  have  won 
her  the  almost  unrivalled  place  which  she  holds  in  living 
literature  ;  and  she  has  conquered  at  last  even  the  public 
opinion  which  once  detested  and  proscribed  her.  I 
could  therefore  hope  to  add  nothing  to  what  has  been 
already  said  by  criticism  in  regard  to  her  merits  as  a 
novelist.  Indeed,  I  think  it  probable  that  the  majority 
of  readers  in  this  country  know  more  of  George  Sand 
through  the  interpretation  of  the  critics  than  through  the 


6  GEORGE  SAND, 

pages  of  her  books.  And  in  her  case  criticism  is  so 
nearly  unanimous  as  to  her  literary  merits,  that  I  may 
safely  assume  the  public  in  general  to  have  in  their 
minds  a  just  recognition  of  her  position  as  a  novelist. 
My  object  is  rather  to  say  something  about  the  place 
which  George  Sand  has  taken  as  a  social  revolutionist, 
about  the  influence  she  has  so  long  exercised  over  the 
world,  and  about  the  woman  herself.  For  she  is  assur- 
edly the  greatest  champion  of  woman's  rights,  in  one 
sense,  that  the  world  has  ever  seen  ;  and  she  is,  on  the 
other  hand,  the  one  woman  out  of  all  the  world  who  has 
been  most  commonly  pointed  to  as  the  appalling  example 
to  scare  doubtful  and  fluttering  womanhood  back  into  its 
sheepfold  of  submissiveness  and  conventionality.  There 
is  hardly  a  woman's  heart  anywhere  in  the  civilized 
world  which  has  not  felt  the  vibration  of  George  Sand's 
thrilling  voice.  Women  who  never  saw  one  of  her 
books,  —  nay,  who  never  heard  even  her  nom  de  plume, 
have  been  stirred  by  emotions  of  doubt  or  fear,  or  repin- 
ing or  ambition,  which  they  never  would  have  known 
but  for  George  Sand,  and  perhaps  but  for  George  Sand's 
uncongenial  marriage.  For,  indeed,  there  is  not  now, 
and  has  not  been  for  twenty  years,  I  venture  to  think,  a 
single  "revolutionary"  idea,  as  slow  and  steady-going 
people  would  call  it,  afloat  anywhere  in  Europe  or  Amer- 
ica, on  the  subject  of  woman's  relations  to  man,  society, 
and  destiny,  which  is  not  due  immediately  to  the  influence 
of  George  Sand,  and  to  the  influence  of  George  Sand's 
unhappy  marriage  upon  Gsorge  Sand  herself. 

The  world  has  of  late  years  grown  used  to  this  extra- 
ordinary woman,  and  has  lost  much  of  the  wonder  and 
terror  with  which  it  once  regarded  her.  I  can  quite 
remember,  —  younger  people  than  I  can  remember,— 


GEORGE  SAND.  7 

the  time  when  all  good  and  proper  personages  in  Eng- 
land regarded  the  authoress  of  "  Indiana  "  as  a  sort  of 
feminine  fiend,  endowed  with  a  hideous  power  for  the 
destruction  of  souls,  and  an  inextinguishable  thirst  for 
the  slaughter  of  virtuous  beliefs.  I  fancy  a  good  deal 
of  this  sentiment  was  due  to  the  fearful  reports  wafted 
across  the  seas,  that  this  terrible  woman  had  not  merely 
repudiated  the  marriage  bond,  but  had  actually  put  off 
the  garments  sacred  to  womanhood.  That  George  Sand 
appeared  in  men's  clothes  was  an  outrage  upon  conse- 
crated proprieties  far  more  astonishing  than  any  theo- 
retical onslaught  upon  old  opinions  could  be.  Reformers, 
indeed,  should  always,  if  they  are  wise  in  their  gener- 
ation, have  a  care  of  the  proprieties.  Many  worthy  peo- 
ple can  listen  with  comparative  fortitude  when  sacred 
and  eternal  truths  are  assailed,  who  are  stricken  with 
horror  when  the  ark  of  propriety  is  never  so  lightly 
touched.  George  Sand's  pantaloons  were,  therefore, 
regarded  as  the  most  appalling  illustration  of  George 
Sand's  wickedness.  I  well  remember  what  excitement, 
scandal,  and  horror  were  created  in  the  provincial  town 
where  I  lived,  some  twenty  years  ago,  when  the  editor 
of  a  local  Panjandrum  (to  borrow  Mr.  Trollope's  word) 
insulted  the  feelings  and  the  morals  of  his  constituents 
and  subscribers  by  polluting  his  pages  with  a  translation 
from  one  of  George  Sand's  shorter  novels.  Ah  me  !  the 
little  novel  might,  so  far  as  morality  was  concerned, 
have  been  written  every  word  by  Miss  Phelps,  or  the 
authoress  of  the  "  Heir  of  Redcliff  "  ;  it  had  not  a  word, 
from  beginning  to  end,  which  might  not  have  been  read 
out  to  a  Sunday-school  of  girls ;  the  translation  was 
made  by  a  woman  of  the  purest  soul,  and,  in  her  own 
locality,  of  the  highest  name  ;  and  yet  how  virtue  did 


8  GEORGE  SAND. 

shriek  out  against  the  publication  !  The  editor  perse- 
vered in  the  publishing  of  the  novel,  spurred  on  to  bold- 
ness by  some  of  his  very  young  and  therefore  fearless 
coadjutors,  who  thought  it  delightful  to  confront  public 
opinion,  and  liked  the  notion  of  the  stars  in  their  courses 
fighting  against  Sisera,  and  Sisera  not  being  dismayed. 
That  charming,  tender,  touching  little  story  !  I  would 
submit  it  to-day  cheerfully  to  the  verdict  of  a  jury  of 
matrons,  confident  that  it  would  be  declared  a  fit  and 
proper  publication.  But  at  that  time  it  was  enough  that 
the  story  bore  the  odious  name  of  George  Sand ;  public 
opinion  condemned  it,  and  sent  the  magazine  which  ven- 
tured to  translate  it  to  an  early  and  dishonored  grave.  I 
remember  reading,  about  that  time,  a  short  notice  of 
George  Sand  by  an  English  authoress  of  some  talent 
and  culture,  in  which  the  Frenchwoman's  novels  were 
described  as  so  abominably  filthy  that  even  the  denizens 
of  the  Paris  brothels  were  ashamed  to  be  caught  read- 
ing them.  *  Now,  this  declaration  was  made  all  in  good 
faith,  in  the  simple  good  faith  of  that  class  of  persons 
who  will  pass  wholesale  and  emphatic  judgment  upon 
works  of  which  they  have  never  read  a  single  page. 
For  I  need  hardly  tell  any  intelligent  person  of  to-day 
that,  whatever  may  be  said  of  George  Sand's  doctrines, 
she  is  no  more  open  to  the  charge  of  indelicacy  than  the 
authoress  of  "  Romola."  I  cannot,  myself,  remember 
any  passage  in  George  Sand's  novels  which  can  be  called 
indelicate ;  and,  indeed,  her  severest  and  most  hostile 
critics  are  fond  of  saying,  not  without  a  certain  justice, 
that  one  of  the  worst  characteristics  of  her  works  is  the 
delicacy  and  beauty  of  her  style,  which  thus  commends 
to  pure  and  innocent  minds  certain  doctrines  that, 
broadly  stated,  would  repel  and  shock  them.  Were  I 


GEORGE  SAND.  9 

one  of  George  Sand's  inveterate  opponents,  this,  or 
something  like  it,  is  the  ground  I  would  take  up.  I 
would  say  :  "  The  welfare  of  the  human  family  demands 
that  a  marriage,  legally  made,  shall  never  be  questioned 
or  undone.  Marriage  is  not  a  union  depending  on  love 
or  congeniality,  or  any  such  condition.  It  is  just  as 
sacred  when  made  for  money,  or  for  ambition,  or  for 
lust  of  the  flesh,  or  for  any  other  purpose,  however  ig- 
noble and  base,  as  when  contracted  in  the  spirit  of  the 
purest  mutual  love.  Here  is  a  woman  of  great  power 
and  daring  genius,  who  says  that  the  essential  condition 
of  marriage  is  love  and  natural  fitness ;  that  a  legal 
union  of  man  and  woman  without  this  is  no  marriage  at 
all,  but  a  detestable  and  disgusting  sin.  Now,  the  more 
delicately,  modestly,  plausibly  she  can  put  this  revolu- 
tionary and  pernicious  doctrine,  the  more  dangerous  she 
becomes,  and  the  more  earnestly  we  ought  to  denounce 
her."  This  was,  in  fact,  what  a  great  many  persons  did 
say  ;  and  the  protest  was  at  least  consistent  and  logical. 

But  horror  is  an  emotion  which  cannot  long  live  on 
the  old  fuel,  and  even  the  world  of  English  Philistinism 
soon  ceased  to  regard  George  Sand  as  a  mere  monster. 
Any  one  now  taking  up  "  Indiana,"  for  example,  would 
perhaps  find  it  not  quite  easy  to  understand  how  the 
book  produced  such  an  effect.  Our  novel-writing  women 
of  to-day  commonly  feed  us  on  more  fiery  stuff  than  this. 
Not  to  speak  of  such  accomplished  artists  in  impurity  as 
the  lady  who  calls  herself  Ouida,  and  one  or  two  others 
of  the  same  school,  we  have  young  women,  only  just  pro- 
moted from  pantalettes,  who  can  throw  you  off  such  glow- 
ing chapters  of  passion  and  young  desire  as  would  make 
the  rhapsodies  of  "Indiana"  seem  very  feeble  milk-and- 
water  brewage  by  comparison.  Indeed,  except  for  some 


10  GEORGE  SAND. 

of  the  descriptions  in  the  opening  chapters,  I  fail  to  see 
any  extraordinary  merit  in  u  Indiana  "  ;  and  toward  the 
end  it  seems  to  me  to  grow  verbose,  weak,  and  tiresome. 
"  Leone  Leoni "  opens  with  one  of  the  finest  dramatic 
outbursts  of  emotion  known  to  the  literature  of  modern 
fiction  ;  but  it  soon  wanders  away  into  discursive  weak- 
ness, and  only  just  toward  the  close  brightens  up  into  a 
burst  of  lurid  splendor.  It  is  not  those  which  I  may  call 
the  questionable  novels  of  George  Sand,  —  the  novels 
which  were  believed  to  illustrate  in  naked  and  appalling 
simplicity  her  doctrines  and  her  life,  —  that  will  bear  up 
her  fame  through  succeeding  generations.  If  every  one 
of  the  novels  which  thus  in  their  time  drew  down  the 
thun  lers  of  Society's  denunciation  were  to  be  swept  into 
the  wallet  wherein  Time,  according  to  Shakespeare,  car- 
ries scraps  for  oblivion,  George  Sand  would  still  remain 
where  she  now  is, — at  the  head  of  the  French  fiction  of 
her  day.  It  is  true,  as  Goethe  says,  that  "  miracle- 
working  pictures  are  rarely  works  of  art."  The  books 
which  make  the  hair  of  the  respectable  public  stand  on 
end  are  not  often  the  works  by  which  the  fame  of  the 
author  is  preserved  for  posterity. 

It  is  a  curious  fact  that,  at  the  early  time  to  which  I 
have  been  alluding,  little  or  nothing  was  known  in  Eng- 
land (or,  I  presume,  in  America)  of  the  real  life  of 
Aurora  Amandine  Dupin,  who  had  been  pleased  to  call 
herself  George  Sand.  People  kneAv,  or  had  heard,  that 
she  had  separated  from  her  husband,  that  she  had  writ- 
ten novels  which  depreciated  the  sanctity  of  legal  mar- 
riage, and  that  she  sometimes  wore  male  costume  in  the 
streets.  This  was  enough.  In  England,  at  least,  wo 
were  ready  to  infer  any  enormity  regarding  a  woman 
who  was  unsound  on  the  legal  marriage  question,  and 


GEORGE  SAND.  II 

who  did  not  wear  petticoats.  What  would  have  been 
said  had  people  then  commonly  known  half  the  stories 
which  were  circulated  in  Paris,  —  half  the  extravagances 
into  which  a  passionate  soul,  and  the  stimulus  of  sudden 
emancipation  from  restraint,  had  hurried  the  authoress 
of  "  Indiana  "  and  "  Lucrezia  Floriani "  ?  For  it  must  be 
owned  that  the  life  of  that  woman  was,  in  its  earlier 
years,  a  strange  and  wild  phenomenon,  hardly  to  be  com- 
prehended, perhaps,  by  American  or  English  natures.  I 
have  heard  George  Sand  bitterly  arraigned  even  by 
persons  who  protested  that  they  were  at  one  with  her  as 
regards  the  early  sentiments  which  used  to  excite  such 
odium.  I  have  heard  her  described  by  such  as  a  sort  of 
Lamia  of  literature  and  passion,  —  a  creature  who  could 
seize  some  noble,  generous,  youthful  heart,  drain  it  of  its 
love,  its  aspirations,  its  profoundest  emotions,  and  then 
fling  it,  squeezed  and  lifeless,  away.  I  have  heard  it 
declared  that  George  Sand  made  "  copy "  of  the  fierce 
and  passionate  loves  which  she  knew  so  well  how  to 
awaken  and  to  foster  ;  that  she  distilled  the  life-blood  of 
youth  to  obtain  the  mixture  out  of  which  she  derived  her 
inspiration.  The  charge  so  commonly  (I  think  unjustly) 
made  against  Goethe,  that  he  played  with  the  girlish  love 
of  Bettina  and  of  others  in  order  to  obtain  a  subject  for 
literary  dissection,  is  vehemently  and  deliberately  urged 
in  an  aggravated  form,  —  in  many  aggravated  forms,  — 
against  George  Sand.  Where,  such  accusers  ask,  is  that 
young  poet,  endowed  with  a  lyrical  genius  rare  indeed  in 
the  France  of  later  days,  —  that  young  poet  whose  imag- 
ination was  at  once  so  daring  and  so  subtle,  —  who  might 
have  been  Beranger  and  Heine  in  one,  and  have  risen  to 
an  atmosphere  in  which  neither  Beranger  nor  Heine  ever 
floated  ?  Where  is  he,  and  what  evil  influence  was  it  which 


12  GEORGE  SAND. 

• 

sapped  the  strength  of  his  nature,  corrupted  his  genius, 
and  prepared  for  him  a  premature  and  shameful  grave  ? 
Where  is  that  young  musician,  whose  pure,  tender,  and 
lofty  strains  sound  sweetly  and  sadly  in  the  ears,  as  the 
very  hymn  and  music  of  the  Might-Have-Been,  —  where 
is  he  now,  and  what  was  the  seductive  power  which 
made  a  plaything  of  him  and  then  flung  him  away? 
Here  and  there  some  man  of  stronger  mould  is  pointed 
out  as  one  who  was  at  the  first  conquered,  and  then 
deceived  and  trifled  with,  but  Avho  ordered  his  stout  heart 
to  bear,  and  rose  superior  to  the  hour,  and  lived  to 
retrieve  his  nature  and  make  himself  a  name  of  respect ; 
but  the  others,  of  more  sensitive  and  perhaps  finer  organ- 
izations, are  only  the  more  to  be  pitied  because  they  were 
so  terribly  in  earnest.  Seldom,  even  in  the  literary  his- 
tory of  modern  France,  has  there  been  a  more  strange 
and  shocking  episode  than  the  publication  by  George 
Sand  of  the  little  book  called  "  Elle  et  Lui,"  and  the 
rejoinder  to  it  by  Paul  de  Musset,  called  "  Lui  et  Elle." 
I  can  hardly  be  accused  of  straying  into  the  regions  of 
private  scandal  when  I  speak  of  two  books  which  had  a 
wide  circulation,  are  still  being  read,  and  may  be  had,  I 
presume,  in  any  New  York  book-store  where  French  lit- 
erature is  sold.  The  former  of  the  two  books,  "  She 
and  He,"  was  a  story,  or  something  which  purported  to 
be  a  story,  by  George  Sand,  telling  of  two  ill-assorted 
beings  whom  fate  had  thrown  together  for  awhile,  and 
of  whom  the  woman  was  all  tenderness,  love,  patience, 
the  man  all  egotism,  selfishness,  sensuousness,  and  eccen- 
tricity. The  point  of  the  whole  business  was  to  show 
how  sublimely  the  woman  suffered,  and  how  wantonly 
the  man  flung  happiness  away.  Had  it  been  merely  a 
piece  of  fiction,  it  must  have  been  regarded  by  any 


GEORGE  SAND.  13 

healthy  mind  as  a  morbid,  unwholesome,  disagreeable 
production,  —  a  sin  of  the  highest  aesthetic  kind  against 
true  art,  which  must  always,  even  in  its  pathos  and  its 
tragedy,  leave  on  the  mind  exalted  and  delightful  impres- 
sions. But  every  one  in  Paris  at  once  hailed  the  story 
as  a  chapter  of  autobiography,  as  the  author's  vindication 
of  one  episode  in  her  own  career,  —  a  vindication  at  the 
expense  of  a  man  who  had  gone  down,  ruined  and  lost, 
to  an  early  grave.  Therefore  the  brother  of  the  dead 
man  flung  into  literature  a  little  book  called  "  He  and 
She,"  in  which  a  story,  substantially  the  same  in  its  out- 
lines, is  so  told  as  exactly  to  reverse  the  conditions  under 
which  the  verdict  of  public  opinion  was  sought.  Very 
curious  indeed  was  the  manner  in  which  the  same  sub- 
stance of  facts  was  made  to  present  the  two  principal 
figures  with  complexions  and  characters  so  strangely 
altered.  In  the  woman's  book  the  woman  was  made  the 
patient,  loving,  suffering  victim  ;  in  the  man's  reply  this 
same  woman  was  depicted  as  the  most  utterly  selfish  and 
depraved  creature  the  human  imagination  could  conceive. 
Even  if  one  had  no  other  means  whatever  of  forming  an 
estimate  of  the  character  of  George  Sand,  it  would  be 
hardly  possible  to  accept  as  her  likeness  the  hideous  pic- 
ture sketched  by  Paul  de  Musset.  No  woman,  I  am  glad 
to  believe,  ever  existed  in  real  life  so  utterly  selfish,  base, 
and  wicked  as  his  bitter  pen  has  drawn.  I  must  say  that 
the  thing  is  very  cleverly  done.  The  picture  is  at  least 
consistent  with  itself.  As  a  character  in  romance  it  might 
be  pronounced  original,  bold,  brilliant,  and,  in  an  artistic 
sense,  quite  natural.  There  is  something  thoroughly 
French  in  the  easy  and  delicate  force  of  the  final  touch 
with  which  de  Musset  dismisses  his  hideous  subject. 
Having  sketched  this  woman  in  tints  that  seem  to  flame 


14  GEORGE  SAND. 

across  the  eyes  of  the  reader,  —  having  described  with 
wonderful  realism  and  power  her  affectation,  her  deceit, 
her  reckless  caprices,  her  base  and  cruel  coquetries, 
her  devouring  wantonness,  her  soul-destroying  arts,  her 
unutterable  selfishness  and  egotism,  —  having,  to  use  a 
vulgar  phrase,  "  turned  her  inside  out,"  and  told  her 
story  backwards,  —  the  author  calmly  explains  that  the 
hero  of  the  narrative  in  his  dying  hour  called  his  brother 
to  his  bedside,  and  enjoined  him,  if  occasion  should  ever 
arise,  if  the  partner  of  his  sin  should  ever  calumniate 
him  in  his  grave,  to  vindicate  his  memory,  and  avenge 
the  treason  practised  upon  him.  "  Of  course,"  adds  the 
narrator,  "  the  brother  made  the  promise,  —  and  I  have 
since  heard  that  he  has  kept  his  word."  I  can  hardly 
hope  to  convey  to  the  reader  any  adequate  idea  of  the 
effect  produced  on  the  mind  by  these  few  simple  words 
of  compressed,  whispered  hatred  and  triumph,  closing  a 
philippic,  or^a  revelation,  or  a  libel  of  such  extraordinary 
bitterness  and  ferocity.  The  whole  episode  is,  I  believe 
and  earnestly  hope,  without  precedent  or  imitation  in 
literary  controversy.  Never,  that  I  know  of,  has  a  living 
woman  been  publicly  exhibited  to  the  world  in  a  por- 
traiture so  hideous  as  that  which  Paul  de  Musset  drew 
of  George  Sand.  Never,  that  I  know  of,  has  any  woman 
gone  so  near  to  deserving  and  justifying  such  a  measure 
of  retaliation. 

For  if  it  be  assumed,  —  and  I  suppose  it  never  has  been 
disputed,  —  that  in  writing  "  Elle  et  Lui  "  George  Sand 
meant  to  describe  herself  and  Alfred  de  Musset,  it  is  hard 
to  conceive  of  any  sin  against  taste  and  feeling,  —  against 
art  and  morals,  —  more  flagrant  than  such  a  publication. 
The  practice,  to  which  French  writers  are  so  much  ad- 
dicted, of  making  "  copy  "  of  the  private  lives,  charac- 


GEORGE  SAND.  15 

ters,  and  relationships  of  themselves  and  their  friends, 
seems  to  me  in  all  cases  utterly  detestable.  Lamartine's 
sins  of  this  kind  were  grievous  and  glaring ;  but  were 
they  red  as -scarlet,  they  would  seem  whiter  than  snow 
when  compared  with  the  lurid  monstrosity  of  George 
Sand's  assault  on  the  memory  of  the  dead  poet  who  was 
once  her  favorite.  The  whole  affair,  indeed,  is  so  unlike 
anything  which  could  occur  in  America  or  in  England, 
that  we  can  hardly  find  any  canons  by  which  to  try  it,  or 
any  standard  of  punishment  by  which  to  regulate  its  cen- 
sure. I  allude  to  it  now  because  it  is  the  only  substan- 
tial evidence  I  know  of  which  does  fairly  seem  to  justify 
the  worst  of  the  accusations  brought  against  George  Sand  ; 
and  I  do  not  think  it  right,  when  writing  for  grown  men 
and  women,  who  are  supposed  to  have  sense  and  judg- 
ment, to  affect  not  to  know  that  such  accusations  are 
made,  or  to  pretend  to  think  that  it  would  be  proper  not 
to  allude  to  them.  They  have  been  put  forward,  replied 
to,  urged  again,  made  the  theme  of  all  manner  of  contro- 
versy in  scores  of  French  and  in  some  English  publica- 
tions. Pray  let  it  be  distinctly  understood  that  I  am  not 
entering  into  any  criticism  of  the  morality  of  any  part  of 
George  Sand's  private  life.  With  that  we  have  nothing 
here  to  do.  I  am  now  dealing  with  the  question,  fairly 
belonging  to  public  controversy,  whether  the  great  artist 
did  not  deliberately  deal  with  human  hearts  as  the  painter 
of  old  is  said  to  have  done  with  a  purchased  slave,  —  in- 
flicting torture  in  order  the  better  to  learn  how  to  depict 
the  struggles  and  contortions  of  mortal  agony.  In  an- 
swer to  such  a  question  I  can  only  point  to  "  Lucrezia 
Floriani  "  and  to  "  Elle  et  Lui,"  and  say  that  unless  the 
universal  opinion  of  qualified  critics  be  wrong,  these  books, 
and  others  too,  owe  their  piquancy  and  their  dramatic 


1 6  GEORGE  SAND. 

force  to  the  anatomization  of  dead  passions  and  discarded 
lovers.  We  have  all  laughed  over  the  pedantic  surgeon  in 
Moliere's  "  Malade  Imaginaire,"  who  invites  his  fiancee, 
as  a  delightful  treat,  to  see  him  dissect  the  body  of  a 
woman.  I  am  afraid  that  George  Sand  did  sometime? 
invite  an  admiring  public  to  an  exhibition  yet  mort 
ghastly  and  revolting,  —  the  dissection  of  the  heart  of  4 
dead  lover. 

But,  in  truth,  we  shall  never  judge  George  Sand  and 
her  writings  at  all,  if  we  insist  on  criticising  them  from 
any  point  of  view  set  up  by  the  proprieties  or  even  tha 
moralities  of  Old  England  or  New  England.  When  the 
passionate  young  woman,  —  in  whose  veins  ran  the  wild 
blood  of  Marshal  Saxe,  —  found  herself  surrendered  by 
legality  and  prescription  to  a  marriage  bond  against  which 
her  soul  revolted,  society  seemed  for  her  to  have  resolved 
itself  into  its  original  elements.  Its  conventionalities  and 
traditions  contained  nothing  which  she  held  herself  bound 
to  respect.  The  world  was  not  her  friend,  nor  the  world's 
law.  By  one  great  decisive  step  she  sundered  herself 
forever  from  the  bonds  of  what  we  call  "  society."  She 
had  shaken  the  dust  of  convention  from  her  feet ;  the 
world  was  all  before  her  where  to  choose.  No  crea- 
ture on  earth  is  so  absolutely  free  as  the  Frenchwoman 
who  has  broken  with  society;  There,  then,  stood  this 
daring  young  woman,  on  the  threshold  of  a  new,  fresh, 
and  illimitable  world ;  a  young  woman  gifted  with 
genius  such  as  our  later  years  have  rarely  seen,  and 
blessed  or  cursed  with  a  nature  so  strangely  uniting  the 
most  characteristic  qualities  of  man  and  woman,  as  to  be 
in  itself  quite  unparalleled  and  unique.  Just  think  of 
it,  —  try  to  think  of  it !  Society  and  the  world  had  no 
longer  any  laws  which  she  recognized.  Nothing  was 


GEORGE  SAND. 


17 


sacred  ;  nothing  was  settled.  She  had  to  evolve  from  her 
own  heart  and  brain  her  own  law  of  life.  What  wonder 
if  she  made  some  sad  mistakes?  Nay,  is  it  not  rather  a 
theme  for  wonder  and  admiration  that  she  did  somehow 
come  right  at  last?  I  know  of  no  one  who  seems  to  me 
to  have  been  open  at  once  to  the  temptations  of  woman's 
nature  and  man's  nature,  except  this  George  Sand.  Her 
soul,  —  her  brain,  —  her  style  may  be  described,  from  one 
point  of  view,  as  exuberantly  and  splendidly  feminine ; 
yet  no  other  woman  has  ever  shown  the  same  power  of 
understanding,  and  entering  into  the  nature  of  a  man.  If 
Balzac  is  the  only  man  who  has  ever  thoroughly  mastered 
the  mysteries  of  a  woman's  heart,  George  Sand  is  the 
only' woman,  so  far  as  I  know,  who  has  ever  shown  that 
she  could  feel  as  a  man  can  feel.  I  have  read  stray  pas- 
sages in  her  novels  which  I  would  confidently  submit  to 
the  criticism  of  any  intelligent  men  unacquainted  with 
the  text,  convinced  that  they  would  declare  that  only  a 
man  could  have  thus  analyzed  the  emotions  of  manhood. 
I  have  in  my  mind,  just  now  especially,  a  passage  in  the 
novel  "Piccinino"  which,  were  the  authorship  unknown, 
would,  I  am  satisfied,  secure  the  decision  of  a  jury  of  lit- 
erary experts  that  the  author  must  be  a  man.  Now  this 
gift  of  entire  appreciation  of  the  feelings  of  a  different 
sex  or  race  is,  I  take  it,  one  of  the  rarest  and  highest 
dramatic  qualities.  Especially  is  it  difficult  for  a  woman, 
as  our  social  life  goes,  to  enter  into  the  feelings  of  a  man. 
"While  men  and  women  alike  admit  the  accuracy  of  cer- 
tain pictures  of  women  drawn  by  such  artists  as  Cer- 
vantes, Moliere,  Balzac,  and  Thackeray,  there  are  few 
women,  —  indeed,  perhaps  there  are  no  women  but  one,  — 
by  whom  a  man  has  been  so  painted  as  to  challenge  and 
compel  the  recognition  and  acknowledgment  of  men.  In 


l8  GEORGE  SAND. 

"  The  Galaxy,"  some  months  ago,  I  wrote  of  a  great 
Englishwoman,  the  authoress  of  "  Romola,"  and  I  ex- 
pressed my  conviction  that  on  the  whole  she  is  entitled  to 
higher  rank,  as  a  novelist,  than  even  the  authoress  of 
*'  Consuelo."  Many,  very  many  men  and  women,  for 
•whose  judgment  I  have  the  highest  respect,  differed 
from  me  in  this  opinion.  I  still  hold  it,  nevertheless  ; 
but  I  freely  admit  that  George  Eliot  has  nothing  like  the 
dramatic  insight  which  enables  George  Sand  to  enter  into 
the  feelings  and  experiences  of  a  man.  I  go  so  far  as  to 
say  that,  having  some  knowledge  of  the  literature  of 
fiction  in  most  countries,  I  am  not  aware  of  the  existence 
of  any  woman  but  this  one,  who  could  draw  a  real,  living, 
struggling,  passion-tortured  man.  All  other  novelisft  of 
George  Sand's  sex,  —  even  including  Charlotte  Bronte,  — 
draw  only  what  I  may  call  "  women's  men."  If  ever  the 
two  natures  could  be  united  in  one  form,  —  if  ever  a 
single  human  being  could  have  the  soul  of  man  and  the 
soul  of  woman  at  once, — George  Sand  might  be  de- 
scribed as  that  physical  and  psychological  phenomenon. 
Now  the  point  to  which  I  wish  to  direct  attention,  is  the 
peculiarity  of  the  temptation  to  which  a  nature  such  as  thia 
was  necessarily  exposed  at  every  turn  when,  free  of  all  re- 
straint and  a  rebel  against  all  conventionality,  it  confronted 
the  world  and  the  world's  law,  and  stood  up,  itself  alone, 
against  the  domination  of  custom  and  the  majesty  of  tra- 
dition. I  claim,  then,  that  when  we  have  taken  all  these 
considerations  jnto  account,  we  are  bound  to  admit  that 
Aurora  Dudevant  deserves  the  generous  recognition  of 
the  world  for  the  use  which  she  made  of  her  splendid 
gifts.  Her  influence  on  French  literature  has  been,  on 
the  whole,  a  purifying  and  strengthening  power.  The 
cynicism,  the  recklessness,  the  wanton,  licentious  disre- 


GEORGE  SAND.  19 

gard  of  any  manner  of  principle,  the  debasing  parade  of 
disbelief  in  any  higher  purpose  or  nobler  restraint,  which 
are  the  shame  and  curse  of  modern  French  fiction,  find 
no  sanction  in  the  pages  of  George  Sand.  I  remember 
no  passage  in  her  works  which  gives  the  slightest  encour- 
agement to  the  "  nothing  new,  and  nothing  true,  and  it 
don't  signify  "  code  of  ethics  which  has  been  so  much  in 
fashion  of  late  years.  I  find  nothing  in  George  Sand 
which  does  not  do  homage  to  the  existence  of  a  principle 
and  a  law  in  everything.  This  daring  woman,  who  broke 
with  society  so  early  and  so  conspicuously,  has  always  in- 
sisted, through  every  illustration,  character,  and  catas- 
trophe in  her  books,  that  the  one  only  reality,  the  one  only 
thing  that  can  endure,  is  the  rule  of  right  and  of  virtue. 
Nor  has  she  ever,  that  I  can  recollect,  fallen  into  the  en- 
feebling and  sentimental  theory  so  commonly  expressed  in 
the  works  of  Victor  Hugo,  that  the  vague  abstraction 
society  is  always  to  bear  the  blame  of  the  faults  commit- 
ted  by  the  individual  man  or  woman.  Of  all  persons  in 
the  world,  Aurora  Dudevant  might  be  supposed  most  likely 
to  adopt  this  easy  and  complacent  theory  as  her  guiding 
principle.  She  had  every  excuse,  every  reason  for  en- 
deavoring to  preach  up  the  doctrine  that  our  errors  are 
society's  and  our  virtues  our  own.  But  I  am  not  aware 
that  she  ever  taught  any  lesson  save  the  lesson  that  men 
and  women  must  endeavor  to  be  heroes  and  heroines  for 
themselves,  heroes  and  heroines  though  all  the  world  else 
were  craven,  and  weak,  and  selfish,  and  unprincipled. 
Even  that  wretched  and  lamentable  "  Elle  et  Lui"  affair, 
utterly  inexcusable  as  it  is  when  we  read  between  the  lines 
its  secret  history,  has,  at  least,  the  merit  of  being  an  earn- 
est and  powerful  protest  against  the  egotistical  and  debas- 
ing indulgence  of  moral  weaknesses  and  eccentricities 


20  GEORGE  SAND. 

which  mean  and  vulgar  minds  are  apt  to  regard  as  the 
privilege  of  genius.  "  Stand  upon  your  own  ground  ;  be 
your  own  ruler ;  look  to  yourself,  not  to  your  stars,  for 
your  failure  or  success ;  always  make  your  standard  a 
lofty  ideal,  and  try  persistently  to  reach  it,  though  all  the 
temptations  of  earth,  and  all  the  power  of  darkness  strive 
against  you  "  —  this,  and  nothing  else,  if  I  have  read  her 
books  rightly,  is  the  moral  taught  by  George  Sand.  She 
may  be  wrong  in  her  principle  sometimes,  but,  at  least, 
she  always  has  a  principle.  She  has  a  profound  and  gen- 
erous faith  in  the  possibilities  of  human  nature ;  in  the 
capacity  of  man's  heart  for  purity,  self-sacrifice,  and  self- 
redemption.  Indeed,  so  far  is  she  from  holding  counsel 
with  wilful  weakness  or  sin,  that  I  think  she  sometimes 
falls  into  the  noble  error  of  painting  her  heroes  as  too 
glorious  in  their  triumph  over  temptation,  in  their  subju- 
gation of  every  passion  and  interest  to  the  dictates  of  duty 
and  of  honor.  Take,  for  instance,  that  extraordinary 
book  which  has  just  been  given  to  the  American  public 
in  Miss  Virginia  Vaughan's  excellent  translation,  "  Mau- 
prat."  If  I  understand  that  magnificent  romance  at  all, 
its  purport  is  to  prove  that  no  human  nature  is  ever 
plunged  into  temptation  beyond  its  own  strength  to  resist, 
provided  that  it  really  wills  resistance  ;  that  no  character 
is  irretrievable,  no  error  inexpiable,  where  there  is  sincere 
resolve  to  expiate,  and  longing  desire  to  retrieve.  Take, 
again,  that  exquisite  little  story,  "La  Derniere  Aldini"  ; 
I  do  not  know  where  one  could  find  a  finer  illustration  of 
the  entire  sacrifice  of  man's  natural  impulse,  passion,  in- 
terest, to  what  might  almost  be  called  an  abstract  idea  of 
honor  and  principle.  I  have  never  read  this  little  story 
without  wondering  how  many  men  one  ever  has  known 
who,  placed  in  the  same  situation  as  that  of  Nello,  the 


GEORGE  SAND.  21 

hero,  would  have  done  the  same  thing ;  and  yet  so  simply 
and  naturally  are  the  characters  wrought  out,  and  the  in- 
cidents described,  that  the  idea  of  pompous,  dramatic  self- 
sacrifice  never  enters  the  mind  of  the  reader,  and  it  seems 
to  him  that  Nello  could  not  do  otherwise  than  as  he  is 
doing.  I  speak  of  these  two  stories  particularly,  because 
in  both  of  them  there  is  a  good  deal  of  the  world  and  the 
flesh ;  that  is,  both  are  stories  of  strong  human  passion 
and  temptation.  Many  of  George  Sand's  novels,  the 
shorter  ones  especially,  are  as  absolutely  pure  in  moral 
tone,  as  entirely  free  from  even  a  taint  or  suggestion  of 
impurity,  as  they  are  perfect  in  style.  Now,  if  we  cannot 
help  knowing  that  much  of  this  great  woman's  life  was  far 
from  being  irreproachable,  are  we  not  bound  to  give  her 
all  the  fuller  credit,  because  her  genius,  at  least,  kept  so 
far  the  whiteness  of  its  soul  ?  Revolutions  are  not  to  be 
made  with  rose-water  ;  you  cannot  have  omelettes  without 
breaking  of  eggs.  I  am  afraid  that  great  social  revolu- 
tionists are  not  often  creatures  of  the  most  pure  and  per- 
fect nature.  It  is  not  to  patient  Griselda  you  must  look 
for  any  protest  against  even  the  uttermost  tyranny  of  so- 
cial conventions.  One  thing  I  think  may,  at  least,  be 
admitted  as  part  of  George  Sand's  vindication,  —  that  the 
marriage  system  in  France  is  the  most  debased  and  debas- 
ing institution  existing  in  civilized  society,  now  that  the 
buying  and  selling  of  slaves  has  ceased  to  be  a  tolerated 
system.  I  hold  that  the  most  ardent  advocates  of  the 
irrevocable  endurance  of  the  marriage  bond  are  bound,  by 
their  very  principles,  to  admit  that,  in  protesting  against 
the  so-called  marriage  system  of  France,  George  Sand 
stood  on  the  side  of  purity  and  right.  Assuredly,  she 
often  went  into  extravagances  in  the  other  direction.  It 
seems  to  be  the  fate  of  all  French  reformers  to  rush  sud- 


22  GEORGE  SAND. 

denly  to  extremes ;  and  we  must  remember  that  George 
Sand  was  not  a  Bristol  Quakeress,  or  a  Boston  transccnd- 
entalist,  but  a  passionate  Frenchwoman,  the  descendant 
of  one  of  the  maddest  votaries  of  love  and  war  who  ever 
stormed  across  the  stage  of  European  history. 

Regarding  George  Sand,  then,  as  an  influence  in  litera- 
ture, and  on  society,  I  claim  for  her  at  least  four  great 
and  special  merits :  First,  she  insisted  on  calling  public 
attention  to  the  true  principle  of  marriage  ;  that  is  to  say, 
she  put  the  question  as  it  had  not  been  put  before.  Of 
course,  the  fundamental  principle  she  would  have  enforced 
is  always  being  urged  more  or  less  feebly,  more  or  less 
sincerely ;  but  she  made  it  her  own  question,  and  illumin- 
ated it  by  the  fervid,  fierce  rays  of  her  genius  and  her 
passion.  Secondly,  her  works  are  an  exposition  of  the 
tremendous  reality  of  the  feelings  which  people  who  call 
themselves  practical  are  -apt  to  regard  with  indifference  or 
contempt  as  mere  sentiments.  In  the  long  run,  the  pas- 
sions decide  the  life-question  one  way  or  the  other.  They 
are  the  tide  which,  as  you  know  or  do  not  know  how  to 
use  it,  will  either  turn  your  mill  and  float  your  boat,  or 
drown  your  fields  and  sweep  away  your  dwellings.  Life 
and  society  receive  no  impulse  and  no  direction  from  the 
influences  out  of  which  the  novels  of  Dickens,  or  even  of 
Thackeray,  are  made  up.  These  are  but  pleasant  or  ten- 
der toying  with  the  playthings  and  puppets  of  existence. 
George  Sand  constrains  us  to  look  at  the  realities  through 
the  medium  of  her  fiction.  Thirdly,  she  insists  that  man 
can  and  shall  make  his  own  career ;  not  whine  to  the 
stars,  and  rail  out  against  the  powers  above,  when  he  has 
weakly  or  Avantonly  marred  his  own  destiny.  Fourthly, 
— and  this  ought  not  to  be  considered  her  least  service  to 
the  literature  of  her  country,  —  she  has  tried  to  teach 


GEORGE  SAND. 


23 


people  to  look  at  Nature  with  their  own  eyes,  and  to  invite 
the  true  love  of  her  to  flow  into  their  hearts.  The  great 
service  which  Ruskin,  with  all  his  eccentricities  and  ex- 
travagances, has  rendered  to  English-speaking  peoples  by 
teaching  them  to  use  their  own  eyes  when  they  look  at 
clouds,  and  waters,  and  grasses,  and  hills,  George  Sand 
has  rendered  to  France. 

I  hold  that  these  are  virtues  and  services  which 
ought  to  outweigh  even  very  grave  personal  and 
artistic  errors.  We  often  hear  that  this  or  that  great 
poet  or  romancist  has  painted  men  as  they  are ;  this 
other  as  they  ought  to  be.  I  think  George  Sand  paints 
men  as  they  are,  and  also  not  merely  as  they  ought  to  be, 
but  as  they  can  be.  The  sum  of  the  lesson  taught  by 
her  books  is  one  of  confidence  in  man's  possibilities,  and 
hope  in  his  steady  progress.  At  the  same  time  she  is 
entirely  practical  in  her  faith  and  her  aspirations.  She 
never  expects  that  the  trees  are  to  grow  up  into  the 
heavens,  that  men  and  women  are  to  be  other  than  men 
and  women.  She  does  not  want  them  to  be  other  ;  she 
finds  the  springs  and  sources  of  their  social  regeneration 
in  the  fact  that  they  are  just  what  they  are,  to  begin 
with.  I  am  afraid  some  of  the  ladies  who  seem  to  base 
their  scheme  of  woman's  emancipation  and  equality  on  the 
assumption  that,  by  some  development  of  time  or 
process  of  schooling,  a  condition  of  things  is  to  be 
brought  about  where  difference  of  sex  is  no  longer  to  be 
a  disturbing  power,  will  find  small  comfort  or  encourage- 
ment in  the  writings  of  George  Sand.  She  deals  in 
realities  altogether ;  the  realities  of  life,  even  when  they 
are  such  as  to  shallow  minds  may  seem  mere  sentiments 
and  ecstacies ;  the  realities  of  society,  of  suffering,  of 
passion,  of  inanimate  nature.  There  is  in  her  nothing 


24  GEORGE  SAND. 

unmeaning,  nothing  untrue  ;  there  is  in  her  much  error, 
doubtless,  but  no  sham. 

I  believe  George  Sand  is  growing  into  a  quiet  and 
beautiful  old  age.  After  a  life  of  storm  and  stress,  a  life 
•which,  metaphorically  at  least,  was  "  worn  by  war  and 
passion,"  her  closing  years  seem  likely  to  be  gilded  with 
the  calm  glory  of  an  autumnal  sunset.  One  is  glad  to 
think  of  her  thus  happy  and  peaceful,  accepting  so 
tranquilly  the  reality  of  old  age,  still  laboring  with  her 
unwearied  pen,  still  delighting  in  books,  and  landscapes, 
and  friends,  and  work.  The  world  can  well  afford  to 
forget  as  st>on  as  possible  her  literary  and  other  errors. 
Of  the  vast  mass  of  romances,  stories,  plays,  sketches, 
criticisms,  pamphlets,  political  articles,  even,  it  is  said, 
ministerial  manifestoes  of  republican  days,  which  she 
poured  out,  only  a  few  comparatively  will  perhaps  be 
always  treasured  by  posterity  ;  but  these  will  be  enough 
to  secure  her  a  classic  place.  And  she  will  not  be 
remembered  by  her  writings  alone.  Hers  is  probably 
the  most  powerful  individuality  displayed  by  any  mod- 
ern Frenchwoman.  The  influence  of  Madame  Roland 
was  but  a  glittering  unreality,  that  of  Madame  de 
Stael  only  a  boudoir  and  coterie  success,  when  com- 
pared with  the  power  exercised  over  literature,  human 
feeling,  and  social  law,  by  the  energy,  the  courage,  the 
genius,  even  the  very  errors  and  extravagances  of  George 
Sand. 


GEORGE  SAND'S  NOVELS. 


I      MAUPRAT.     Translated  by  VIRGINIA  VACGHAW. 
JI      ANTONIA.     Translated  by  VIRGINIA  VADGHAN. 

III.  MONSIEUR    SYLVESTRE.       Trar.&lated    by    FHAKCH 

GEORGE  SHAW. 

IV.  THE   SNOW   MAN.     Translated  by  VIRGINIA.  VACG HAH. 
V.    THE  MILLER  OF  ANGLBAULT.     Translated  by  MART 

E.  UEWEY. 
VI.     MY   SISTER  JEANNIE.     Translated  by  S.  R.  CROCKER 

A  tlcndard  Library  Edition,  uniformly  bound,  in  neat  IQmo  volume*,    tack 
volume  told  separately.     Price  $1.50. 

SOME    NOTICES    OF    "MAUPRAT." 

"  An  admirable  translation.  As  to  '  Mauprat,'  with  which  novel  Robert! 
Br  >thers  introduce  the  first  of  French  novelists  to  the  American  public,  if  tlnsrt 
were  any  doubts  as  to  George  Sand's  power,  it  would  for  ever  set  them  at  rest. 
.  .  .  The  object  of  the  story  is  to  show  how,  by  her  (Edmee's)  noble  nature,  he 
(Mauprat)  is  subsequently  transformed  from  a  brute  to  a  man;  his  sensual  pas- 
sion to  a  pure  and  holy  love."  —  Harper's  Monthly. 

"  The  excellence  of  George  Sand,  as  we  understand  it,  lies  in  her  comprehen- 
sion of  the  primitive  elements  of  mankind.  She  has  conquered  her  way  into  the 
human  heart,  and  whether  it  is  at  peace  or  at  war,  is  the  same  to  her ;  for  she  U 
m!  tress  of  all  its  moods.  No  woman  before  ever  painted  the  passions  and  the 
emotions  with  such  force  and  fidelitv,  and  with  such  consummate  art.  Whatever 
•Ise  she  may  be,  she  is  always  an  artist.  .  .  .  Love  is  the  key-note  of  '  Mauprat.' 
—  love,  and  what  it  can  accomplish  in  taming  an  otherwise  untamable  spirit. 
The  hero,  Bernard  Mnuprat,  grows  up  with  his  uncles,  who  are  practically  ban- 
dits, as  was  not  uncommon  with  men  of  their  class,  in  the  provinces,  betore  the 
breaking  out  of  the  French  Revolution.  He  is  a  young  savage,  of  whom  the  best 
that  cau  be  said  is.  that  he  is  only  less  wicked  than  his  relatives,  because  he  hai 
somewhere  within  him  a  sense  of  generosity  and  honor,  to  which  they  are  entire 
strangers.  To  sting  this  sense  into  activity,  to  detect  the  makings  of  a  man  in  thii 
brute,  to  make  this  brute  into  a  man,  is  the  difficult  problem,  which  is  worked 
out  by  love,  —  the  love  of  Bernard  for  his  cousin  Edmee,  and  hers  for  him,  —  the 
love  of  two  strong,  passionate,  noble  natures,  locked  in  a  life-and-death  struggle, 
in  which  the  man  is  finally  overcome  by  the  unconquerable  strength  of  woman- 
hood. Only  a  great  writer  could  have  described  such  a  struggle,  and  only  a  great 
artist  could  have  kept  it  within  allowable  limits.  This  George  Sand  has  done,  wa 
think  ;  for  her  portrait  of  Bernard  is  vigorous  without  being  coarse,  and  her  situ- 
ations are  strong  without  being  dangerous.  Such,  at  least,  is  the  impression  we 
hr.ve  received  from  reading  '  Mauprat,'  which,  besides  being  an  admirable  study 
of  character.  Is  also  a  fine  picture  of  French  provincial  life  and  manners."  —  Put- 
nam's Monthly. 

'•  Roberts  Brothers  propose  to  publish  a  series  of  translations  of  George 
Band's  better  novels.  We  can  hardly  say  that  all  are  worth  appearing  in  Knj;  i.-li  ; 
but  it  is  certain  that  the  '  better  '  list  will  comprise  a  good  many  which  are  worth 
translating,  wml  among  these  U  '  Mauprat,'  —  though  by  no  means  the  best  of 
them.  Written  to  show  the  possibility  of  constancy  in  man,  a  love  inspired  be- 
fore and  continuing  through  marriage,  it  is  itself  a  contradiction  to  a  good  many 
of  the  popular  notions  respecting  the  author.  —  who  is  gem-rally  supposed  tc  be 
as  indifferent  to  the  sanctities  of  the  marriage  relation  as  was  her  celebrated  an- 
cestor, Augustus  of  Saxony.  .  .  .  The  translation  is  admirable.  It  is  seldom  tha* 
One  reads  such  good  English  in  a  work  translated  from  any  language.  The  new 
gerios  is  inaugurated  in  the  best  possible  wa-,  under  the  hands  of  Miss  Vaughan 
and  we  trust  that  she  may  have  a  great  deal  to  do  with  its  continuance.  It  Is 
not  every  one  who  can  read  French  who  can  write  English  so  well." —  Old  and 

m*. 

Sold  everywhere.  Mailed,  postpaid,  on  receipt  of  the  advertised  price, 
ty  the  Publishers, 

ROBERTS  BROTHERS.  BOSTON. 


Messrs.  Roberts  Brothers    Publications. 
FAMOUS  WOMEN  SERIES, 

EMILY  "BRONTE. 

BY    A.    MARY    F.    ROBINSON. 
One  vol.   16mo.  Cloth.  Price,  $1.00. 

"  Miss  Robinson  has  written  a  fascinating  biography.  .  .  .  Emily  Bronte  is 
•interesting,  not  because  she  wrote  '  Wuthering  Heights,'  but  because  of  her 
brave,  baffled,  human  life,  so  lonely,  so  full  of  pain,  but  with  a  great  hope  shining 
beyond  all  the  darkness,  and  a  passionate  defiance  in  bearing  more  than  the 
burdens  that  were  laid  upon  her.  The  story  of  the  three  sisters  is  infinitely  sad, 
but  it  is  the  ennobling  sadness  that  belongs  to  large  natures  cramped  and  striving 
for  freedom  to  heroic,  almost  desperate,  work,  with  little  or  no  result.  The  author 
of  this  intensely  interesting,  sympathetic,  and  eloquent  biography,  is  a  young  lady 
and  a  poet,  to  whom  a  place  is  given  in  a  recent  anthology  of  living  English  poets, 
which  is  supposed  to  contain  only  the  best  poems  of  the  best  writers."  —  Boston 
Daily  Advertiser. 

"Miss  Robinson  had  many  excellent  qualifications  for  the  task  she  has  per- 
formed in  this  little  volume,  among  which  may  be  named,  an  enthusiastic  interest 
in  her  subject  and  a  real  sympathy  with  Emily  Bronte's  sad  and  heroic  life.  '  To 
represent  her  as  she  was'  says  Miss  Robinson,  '  would  be  her  noblest  and  most 
fitting  monument.'  .  .  .  Emily  Bronte  here  becomes  well  known  to  us  and,  in  one 
sense,  this  should  be  praise  enough  for  any  biography."  —  New  York  Times. 

"The  biographer  who  finds  such  material  before  him  as  the  lives  and  diameters 
of  the  Bronte  family  need  have  no  anxiety  as  to  the  interest  of  his  work.  Char- 
acters not  only  strong  but  so  uniquely  strong,  genius  so  supreme,  misfortunes  so 
overwhelming,  set  in  its  scenery  so  forlornly  picturesque,  could  not  fail  to  attract 
all  readers,  if  told  even  in  the  most  prosaic  language.  When  we  <idd  to  this,  that 
Miss  Robinson  has  told  their  story  not  in  prosaic  language,  but  with  a  literary 
style  exhibiting  all  the  qualities  essential  to  good  biography,  our  readers  will 
understand  that  this  life  of  Emily  Bronte  is  not  only  as  interesting  as  a  novel,  but 
a  great  deal  more  interesting  than  most  novels.  As  it  presents  most  vividly  a 
general  picture  of  the  family,  there  seems  hardly  a  reason  for  giving  it  Emily's  name 
alone,  except  perhaps  for  the  masterly  chapters  on  •  Wuthering  Heights,'  which 
the  reader  will  find  a  grateful  condensation  of  the  best  in  that  powerful  but  some- 
what forbidding  story.  We  know  of  no  point  in  the  Bronte  history  —  their  genius, 
their  surroundings,  their  faults,  their  happiness,  their  miserv,  their  love  and  friend- 
ships, their  peculiarities,  their  power,  their  gentleness,  their  patience,  their  pride, 
—  which  Miss  Robinson  has  not  touched  upon  with  conscientiousness  and  sym- 
pathy."—  The  Critic. 

"'  Emily  Bronte  '  is  the  second  of  the  '  Famous  Women  Series,'  which  Roberts 
Brothers,  Boston,  propose  to  publish,  and  of  which  'George  Eiiot '  was  the  initial 
volume.  Not  the  least  remarkable  of  a  very  remarkable  family,  the  personage 
whose  life  is  here  written,  possesses  a  peculiar  interest  to  all  who  are  at  all  familiar 
with  the  sad  and  singular  history  of  herself  and  her  sister  Charlotte.  That  the 
author,  Miss  A.  Mary  F.  Robinson,  has  done  her  work  with  minute  fidelity  to 
facts  as  well  as  affectionate  devotion  to  the  subject  of  her  sketch,  is  plainly  to  be 
seen  all  through  the  book."  —  Washington  Post. 


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READY  AND  IN  PREPARATION. 
SIR  WALTER   SCOTT'S  "LAY  OF  THE  LAST  MINSTREL," 
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three   poems   in   one   volume. 

"  There  are  no  books  for  boys  like  these  poems  by  Sir  Walter 
Scott.  Every  boy  likes  them,  if  they  are  not  put  into  his  hands 
too  late.  They  surpass  everything  for  boy  reading"  —  Ralph 
\ValJo  Emerson. 

OLIVER    GOLDSMITH'S   "THE    VICAR    OF    WAKEFIKLD." 
With   Illustrations   by  Mulready. 

DEFOE'S    "ROBINSON    CRUSOE."     With   Illustrations   by 
Stothaid. 

BERNARDIN  DE  SAINT-PIERRE'S  "PAUL  AND  VIRGINIA." 
With    Illustrations  by  Lalauze. 

SOUTHEY'S   "LIFE  OF   NELSON."     With   Illustrations   by 
Birket    Foster. 

VOLTAIRE'S  "LIFE  OF  CHARLES  THE  TWELFTH."    With 
Maps   and    Portraits. 

MARIA    EDGEWORTH'S  "CLASSIC    TALES."    With  a  bio- 
graphical Sketch   by  Grace   A.   Oliver. 

LORD  MACAULAY'S  "  LAYS  OF  ANCIENT  ROME."    With 
a   Biographical  Sketch    and   Illustrations. 

BUNYAN'S  "PILGRIM'S  PROGRESS."   With  all  of  the  origi- 
nal  Illustrations   in   fac-simile. 

CLASSIC    HEROIC    BALLADS.      Edited  by  the  Editor  of 
"  Quiet   Hours." 

CLASSIC   TALES.     By   Anna   Letitia   Barbauld.     With   a 
Biographical  Sketch  by  Grace  A.  Oliver. 

CLASSIC  TALES.      By   Ann   and    Jane    Taylor.     With   a 
Biographical  Sketch  by  Grace  A.  Oliver. 

AND    OTHERS. 


MESSES.  EOBEETS  BKOTHEES'  PUBLICATIONS. 


JFamous  (fflomen 
GEORGE    ELIOT. 

BY  MATHILDE   BLIND. 

One  vol.     i6mo.     Cloth.     Price,  $1.00. 


"  Messrs.  Roberts  Brothers  begin  a  series  of  Biographies  of  Famous 
Women  with  a  life  of  George  Eliot,  by  Mathilde  Blind.  The  idea  of  the 
series  is  an  excellent  one,  and  the  reputation  of  its  publishers  is  a  guarantee 
for  its  adequate  execution.  This  book  contains  about  three  hundred  pages  in 
open  type,  and  not  only  collects  and  condenses  the  main  facts  that  are  known 
in  regard  to  the  history  of  George  Eliot,  but  supplies  other  material  from 
personal  research.  It  is  agreeably  written,  and  with  a  good  idea  of  propor- 
tion in  a  memoir  of  its  size.  The  critical  study  of  its  subject's  works,  which 
is  made  in  the  order  of  their  appearance,  is  particularly  well  done.  In  fact, 
good  taste  and  good  judgment  pervade  the  memoir  throughout."  —  Saturday 
Evening  Gazette. 

"  Miss  Blind's  little  book  is  written  with  admirable  good  taste  and  judg- 
ment, and  with  notab'e  self-restraint.  It  does  not  weary  the  reader  with 
critical  discursiveness,  nor  with  attempts  to  search  out  high-flown  meanings 
and  recondite  oracles  in  the  plain  'yea'  and  '  nay  '  of  life.  It  is  a  graceful 
and  unpretentious  little  biography,  and  tells  all  that  need  be  told  concerning 
one  of  the  greatest  writers  of  the  time.  It  is  a  deeply  interesting  if  not 
fascinating  woman  whom  Miss  Blind  presents,"  says  the  New  York 
Tribune. 

"  Miss  Blind's  little  biographical  study  of  George  Fliot  is  written  with 
sympathy  and  good  taste,  and  is  very  welcome.  It  gives  us  a  graphic  if  not 
elaborate  sketch  of  the  personality  and  development  of  the  great  novelist,  is 
particularly  full  and  authentic  concerning  her  earlier  years,  tells  enough  of 
the  leading  motives  in  her  work  to  give  the  general  reader  a  lucid  idea  of  the 
true  drift  and  purpose  of  her  art,  and  analyzes  carefully  her  various  writings, 
with  no  attempt  at  profound  criticism  or  fine  writing,  but  with  appreciation, 
insight,  and  a  clear  grasp  of  those  underlying  psychological  principles  which 
are  so  closely  interwoven  in  every  production  that  came  from  her  pen."  — 
Traveller. 

"  The  lives  of  few  great  writers  have  attracted  more  curiosity  and  specula- 
tion than  that  of  George  Eliot.  Had  she  only  lived  earlier  in  the  century 
she  might  easily  have  become  the  centre  of  a  mythos.  As  it  is,  many  of  the 


present  volume."  — Philadelphia  Press. 

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FIGURES  OF  THE  PAST.  From  the  Leaves  of  Old 
Journals.  By  Josiah  Quincy  (Class  of  1821,  Harvard 
College).  i6mo.  Price $1-5^ 

"  There  are  chapters  on  life  in  the  Academy  at  Andover,  on  Harvard  Sixty  Years 
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John  Randolph,  Jackson  and  other  eminent  persons,  and  sketches  of  old  Washington 
and  old  Boston  society.  The  kindly  pen  of  the  author  is  never  dipped  in  gall — he 
remembers  the  pleasing  aspects  of  character,  and  his  stories  and  anecdotes  are  told  in 
the  best  of  humor  and  leave  no  sting.  The  book  is  of  a  kind  which  we  are  not  likely 
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WHIST,    OR    BUMBLEPUPPY?       By    Pembridge. 

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ever,  will  fail  to  read  it  with  interest,  and  few  will  fail  to  read  it  with  advantage. 
Upon  the  ordinary  rules  of  whist,  Pembridge  supplies  much  sensible  and  thor- 
oughly amusing  comment.  The  best  player  in  the  world  may  gain  from  his  ob- 
servations, and  a  mediocre  player  can  scarcely  find  a  better  counsellor.  There  is 
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RECOLLECTIONS  OF  DANTE  GABRIEL  ROS- 
SETTI.  By  T.  Hall  Caine.  With  Portrait.  One  vol. 
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"Mr.Caine's  'Recollections  of  Rossetti'  throws  light  upon  many  events  in  Rcw 

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survive." — London  Alheneeum. 


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PHYLLIS  BROWNE.  A  Story.  By  Flora  L.  Shaw. 
Author  of  "Castle  Blair  "and  "Hector."  i6mo.  Cloth. 
Illustrated.  Price, j&l.oo 

'"Castle  Blair' and  'Hector'  are  such  good  stories  that  a  third,  by  the  same 
author,  Flora  L.  SHaw,  will  be  equally  welcomed.  '  Hector'  was  one  of  the  most 
charming  books  ever  written  about  a  boy.  '  Phyllis  Browne '  is  the  new  story.  She 
is  evidently  the  author's  ideal  girl,  as  Hector  was  her  ideal  boy,  and  a  noble,  splendid 
pirl  she  is.  Yet  the  book  is  not  a  child's  book ;  it  is  about  children,  but  not  for  them. 
The  story  is  far  more  interesting  than  most  novels  are,  and  far  more  exciting.  The 
rash  generosity  of  the  children  is  beautiful;  their  free,  trustful  lives  are  noble  and 
sweet ;  but  when  they  undertake  to  right  social  wrongs,  and  gallantly  set  their  brave 
hearts  and  childish  inexperience  against  the  established  wrongs  of  society,  they  come 
to  grief,  but  in  no  commonplace  way.  Their  dangers  are  as  unusual  and  on  as  large 
a  scale  as  their  characters  and  courage  are.  The  book  is  full  of  tender  and  loving 
things;  it  makes  the  heart  larger,  and  brings  back  the  splendid  dreams  of  one's  own 
youth,"  says  the  Boston  correspondent  of  the  Worcester  Spy. 


THE  MARQUIS  OF  CARABAS.  A  Romance.  By 
Harriet  Prescott  Spofford,  author  of  "The  Amber 
Gods,"  "The  Thief  in  the  Night,"  etc.  i6mo.  Cloth.  Price,  $1.00 

"This  is  the  latest  offering  of  the  author  of  'The  Amber  Gods,'  and  it  is  as  odd  as 
striking,  and  as  impressive  in  its  shadowy  implication  as  anything  she  has  ever 
written.  Handled  differently,  the  incidents  would  seem  theatrical;  as  told  by  Mrs. 
Spofford,  the  story  is  like  the  vivid  passages  of  a  drama  from  which,  once  seen,  you 
cannot  escape.  Pleasant  or  unpleasant  they  force  themselves  upon  the  consideration 
and  lay  hold  of  the  imagination.  So  it  is  with  '  The  Marquis  of  Carabas.'  " — Chicago 
Inter-Ocean. 

" 'The  Marquis  of  Carabas,' by  Harriet  Prescott  Spofford,  is  a  work  of  unique 
quality,  being  really  a  poem  in  the  guise  of  a  prose  novel.  The  thought  is  tense  and 
sublimated,  and  the  style  glowing,  musical  and  polished.  There  is  abundant  inven- 
tion in  the  story,  and  nothing  of  common-place  and  indolent  imitation  which  in  the 
case  of  ordinary  raconteurs  contributes  so  largely  to  swell  the  bulk  of  results.  The 
narrative  fascinates  one,  but  the  fascination  is  not  of  a  stream  flowing  largely  and 
naturally  through  the  landscape ;  it  is  rather  that  of  silver  bells,  whose  clear,  finely 
modulated  chimes  touch  the  finer  issues  of  feeling,  but  not  without  some  obtrusive 
sense  of  study  and  premeditation."  — Home  Journal. 


LANDOR'S   IMAGINARY  CONVERSATIONS. 

"With   a  portrait.      A  new  edition.      5  volumes.      i6mo. 

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PEARLS  OF  THE  FAITH  ;  or,  Islam's  Rosary ;  being 
the  "Ninety-nine  Beautiful  Names  of  Allah."  By 
Edwin  Arnold.  i6mo.  Cloth.  Uniform  with  "The 
Light  of  Asia."  Price, $1.00 

"Mr.  Edwin  Arnold  has  finished  his  Oriental  trilogy.  The  first  part  5s  'The 
Light  of  Asia.'  The  second  part  is  '  The  Indian  Song  of  Songs.'  The  trilogy  is 
completed  by  '  Pearlsofthe  Faith,' in  which  the  poet  tells  the  beads  of  a  pious  Moslem. 
The  Mohammedan  has  a  chaplet  of  three  strings,  each  siring  containing  33  beads, 
each  bead  representing  one  of  the  'Ninety-nine  beautiful  names  of  Allah.  These 
short  poems  have  no  connection ;  they  vary  in  measure,  but  aie  all  simple  and  without 
a  touch  of  obscurity.  All  the  legends  and  instructions  inculcate  the  gentle  virtues 
that  make  life  lovely  —  courtesy,  humility,  hospitality,  care  for  the  poor  and  the  ill, 
kindness  to  dumb  animals,  perfect  manners  in  social  intercourse.  Many  of  the  poems 
are  suitable  for  Christian  Sunday-schools.  .  .  .  The  view  of  Mohammedanism 
given  by  these  poems  is  very  pleasant;  the  precepts  for  life  here  are  sweet  and  noble; 
the  promises  for  heaven  are  definite ;  they  appeal  directly  to  the  love  of  what  is 
known  as  pleasure  in  this  life,  and  that  must  be  renounced  in  this  life,  but  in  the  next 
it  may  be  enjoyed  to  the  uttermost  without  evil  consequences."  —  Boston  Daily 
A  dvertiser. 

ART  AND  NATURE  IN  ITALY.  By  Eugene  Ben- 
son. i6mo.  Cloth.  Price $1.00 

"  Mr.  Benson's  long  residence  in  that  country  has  operated  to  imbue  his  mind  with 
the  spirit  of  the  region.  He  treats  con  aniore  of  its  art  in  Us  historical  and  in  its 
modern  aspects,  and  he  presents  its  scenes  of  nature  in  their  most  fascinating  form. 
Mr.  Benson  is  not  only  one  of  the  most  appreciative  of  students  and  observers,  but 
he  has  a  rare  grace  of  manner  as  well.  He  writes  little  of  late,  but  his  productions 
are  always  acceptable  to  cultivated  people."  —  Saturday  Evening  Gazette. 

"This  book  is  a  record  of  impressions  and  reflections  on  art  and  nature  in  Italy. 
The  great  beauty  and  the  historic  associations  of  the  country  are  set  forth  in  very 
pleasing  language  by  one  who  fully  appreciates  them.  He  particularly  describes 
those  portions  of  that  beautiful  land  in  which  its  most  distinguished  artists  have 
lived,  showing  how  its  natural  features,  its  enchanting  scenery,  must  have  had  a 
molding  influence  upon  their  tastes  and  their  works.  His  estimates  of  art  and  artists 
and  his  criticisms  are,  in  the  main,  just  and  satisfactory." — Western  Christian 
A  dvocate. 

NORSE  STORIES,  RETOLD  FROM  THE  EDDAS. 

By  Hamilton  W.  Mabie.     i6mo.     Cloth.     Price,     .     .     $1.00 

"  Is  one  of  the  most  charming  little  books  for  children  I  have  ever  seen.  The 
myths  are  splendidly  told,  and  every  household  in  America  ought  to  have  a  copy  of 
the  book."  —  Prof.  R.  B.  Anderson. 

"The  old  Norse  stories  bear  being  told  again  and  again.  Mr.  Mabie  keeps  their 
freshness,  fascination  and  simplicity  in  his  new  version  of  them,  and  one  reads  with 
sn.ibated  pleasure  of  Odin's  search  for  wisdom,  of  the  wooing  of  Gerd,  and  of  all 
the  strange  adventures  of  Thor,  of  the  beautiful  Balder,  of  the  wicked  Loke,  and, 
best  of  all,  of  the  new  earth  that  was  created  after  long  years  of  darkness,  in  which 
there  was  no  sun,  no  moon,  no  stars,  no  Asgard,  no  Hel,  no  Jotunheim;  in  which 
gods,  giants,  monsters  and  men  were  all  dead —  the  earth  upon  which  the  pods  look 
lovinglv,  upon  which  men  are  industrious  and  obedient,  and  know  that  the  Ail-Father 
helps  them."  —  Boston  Daily  Advertiser. 


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THE  WISDOM  OF  THE  BRAHMIN.  A  Didactic 
Poem.  Translated  from  the  German  of  Friedrich  Riick- 
ert.  By  Chas.  T.  Brooks.  Six  cantos.  i6mo.  Cloth, 
Price, $1.25 

"The  Brahmin,"  says  the  translator,  "  is  a  poem  of  vast  range,  expressing  the 
world-wisdom  which  the  author  had  been  for  years  storing  up  in  his  large  heart,  and 
evolving  out  of  his  creative  soul."  Says  Dr.  Beyer,  in  his  Life  of  Riickert :  "  '  The 
Wisdom  of  the  Brahmin  '  is  a  poetic  house-treasure  of  which  our  nation  may  justly 
be  proud.  So  much  has  been  said  and  sung  of  late  years  of  '  The  Light  of  Asia,'  the 
'Sympathy  of  Religions,'  and  the  like,  that  the  present  seemed  to  be  an  auspicious 
moment  to  venture  a  volume  of  Riickert's  greatest  work." 

"  'These  twenty  books  are  a  sea  of  thoughts  and  contemplations  full  of  Brahminic 
tranquility  and  German  depth  and  fullness,  in  simple  gnomes,  sentences,  epigrams, 
parables,  fables  and  tales.'  Gottsschall  declares  the  work  to  be  'a  poetic  treasure  of 
which  the  German  nation  may  justly  be  proud.'  The  translator,  speaking  of  his  own 
experiences,  says  the  poem  has  affected  him  as  '  a  sparkling  flood  of  heart-searching 
and  soul-lifting  thought  and  sentiment,  such  as  no  other  work  within  our  knowledge 
has  ever  presented.'  "  —  Home  jfournal. 


SOCRATES.  The  Apology  and  Crito  of  Plato,  and  the 
Phaedo  of  Plato.  Uniform  with  "Marcus  Aurelius," 
"  Imitation  of  Christ, "  etc.  iSmo.  Flexible  cloth,  red 
edges.  Price,  50  cents  each.  Two  series  in  one  volume. 
Cloth,  red  edges.  Price,  75  cents. 

<"  If,  as  is  strongly  asserted,  there  maybe  found  in  the  writings  of  Plato  all  the 
wisdom  and  learning  of  the  ancients,^as  well  as  the  treasure-house  from  which  all 
succeeding  writers  have  borrowed  their  best  ideas,  then  are  these  little  books  worth 
their  weight  in  gold,  for  they  contain  some  of  the  choicest  gems  to  be  found  in  the 
collected  works  of  the  famous  Greek  philosopher.  They  are  companion  volumes, 
the  text  being  taken  unabridged  from  Professor  Jewell's  revised  iranslation  of  Plato. 
They  tell  the  whole  story  of  the  trial,  imprisonment  and  death  of  Socrates.  The 
Apology  gives  the  defence,  the  Crito  relales  ihe  offer  of  escape,  the  Phaedo  describes 
the  last  hours.  The  more  studiously  and  the  more  frequently  these  books  are  read 
the  more  keen  will  be  the  appreciation  of  their  intellectual  and  moral.excelJence."  — 
Providence  Journal. 


JEAN    INGELOW'S    NOVELS.       Off  the   Skelligs; 
Fated  to  be  Free;    Sarah  de  Berenger;    Don  John. 
A  new  edition.     4  vols.     i6mo.     Imitation  half  calf. 
Price,        $5.00 


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THE  JEAN  INGELOW  BIRTHDAY  BOOK.     With 
red-line  border  and  divisions,  1 2  illustrations  and  portrait. 

i6mo.     Cloth,  gilt  and  illuminated.     Price, $1.00 

Full  calf  or  morocco, £3. 50 

"  This  is  a  dainty  little  volume  having  a  selection  from  Jean  Inflow  for  each  day 
of  the  year.  The  extracts  are  of  both  prose  and  verse.  There  are  graceful  illustra- 
tions for  each  month  suited  in  subject  to  the  season.  The  book  will  be  welcomed  by 
admirers  of  this  writer  and  must  prove  a  popular  gift-book  for  the  birthday  season." — 
Chicago  A  dvance. 

"We  have  seen  no  more  tasteful  book  this  year  than  'The  Jean  Ingelow  Birthday 
Book,'  which  Messrs.  Roberts  Brothers  publish.  It  is  somewhat  larger  in  form  than 
are  the  birthday  books  with  which  the  public  is  familiar,  is  printed  0:1  very  f.ne  paper, 
and  has  a  page  with  the  usual  quotations  and  the  usual  blanks,  the  whole  encircled 
with  a  carmine  line  border,  the  date  of  the  days  of  the  months  being  printed  in  the 
same  color.  The  work  is  illustrated  with  handsome  engravings,  and  has  a  steel- 
engraved  portrait  of  Jean  Ingelow.  The  binding  is  a  real  gem.  Nothing  could  well 
be  more  attractive  in  the  vay  of  cloth  ornament  than  is  its  combination  of  design  and 
color."  —  Saturday  Evening  Gazette, 


UNDER  THE  SUN.  By  PhiL  Robinson,  the  new 
English  Humorist.  With  a  Preface  by  Edwin  Arnold, 
author  of  "The  Light  of  Asia."  i6mo.  Cloth.  Price,  $1.50 

This  is  a  volume  of  essays,  humorous  and  pathetic,  of  incidents,  scenes,  and 
objects  grouped  under  the  heads:  Indian  Sketches,  The  Indian  Seasons,  Unnatural 
History,  Idle  Hours  under  the  Punkah. 

"Under  the  Sun,"  by  Phil.  Robinson,  is  one  of  the  most  delightful  of  recent 
books.  The  style  is  fascinating  in  iis  strength  and  picturesqueness,  and  there  is  now 
and  then  a  delicious  quaintness  that  recalls  Charles  Lamb.  A  volume  such  as  this  is 
rare  in  our  day,  when  the  art  of  essay  writing  is  almost  lost  and  forgotten.  Fresh- 
ness, vigor,  humor,  pathos,  graphic  power,  a  keen  love  for  nature,  a  gentle  love  for 
animals,  and  a  pleasing  originality  are  among  the  more  charming  characteristics  of 
this  work,  which  maybe  read  a^ain  and  again  with  renewed  satisfaction.  Its  scenes 
are  laid  in  India,  and  whether  the  author  discourses  of  the  elephant,  the  rhinoceros, 
some  bird  that  has  attracted  his  attention,  a  tree,  or  a  flower;  whether  he  describes 


that  it  is  impossible  to  exaggerate  its  peculiar  merits,  or  to  bestow  too  large  a  share  of 
praise  upon  it.  It  is  not  a  book  for  the  few,  but  for  the  many,  and  all  will  find  delight 
in  its  perusal."  —  Saturday  Evening  Gazette. 


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A    LITTLE    PILGRIM.      Reprinted    from     Macmillan's 

Magazine.     i6mo.     Cloth.     Red  edges.     Price $  .75 

"An  exquisitely  written  little  sketch  is  found  in  that  remarkable  production,  'The 
Little  Pilgrim,'  which  is  just  now  attracting  much  attention  both  in  Europe  and 
America.  It  is  highly  imaginative  in  its  scope,  representing  one  of  the  world-worn 
and  v.-eary  pilgrims  of  our  earthly  sphere  as  entering  upon  the  delights  of  heaven 
after  death.  The  picture  of  heaven  is  drawn  with  the  rnrcr.t  dclicncy  and  refinement, 
and  is  in  agreeable  contrast  in  this  respect  to  the  material  sketch  of  this  future  home 
furnished  in  Miss  Stuart  Phelps's  well-remembered  'Gates  Ajar.1  The  book  will  be 
abalm  to  the  heart  of  many  readers  who  are  in  accord  with  the  faiih  of  its  author; 
and  to  others  its  reading  will  afford  rare  pleasure  from  the  exceeding  beauty  and 
affecting  simplicity  of  its  almost  perfect  literary  style." — Saturday  Evening  Gazette. 

"The  life  beyond  the  crave,  when  the  short  life  in  this  world  is  ended,  is  to  many 
a  source  of  dread  —  to  all  a  mystery.  'A  Little  Pilgrim'  has  apparently  solved  it, 
and,  indeed,  it  seems  on  reading  this  little  book  as  if  thefe  were  a  great  probability 
about  it.  A  soft,  gentle  tone  pervades  its  every  sentence,  and  one  cannot  read  it 
without  feeling  refreshed  and  strengthened."  —  T/te  A  Ita  California. 

THE  GREAT  EPICS  OF  MEDIAEVAL  GERMANY. 
An  Outline  of  their  Contents  and  History.  By  George 
Theodore  Dippold,  Professor  at  Boston  University  and 
Wellesley  College.  i6mo.  Cloth.  Price $i-5<> 

Professor  Francis  J.  Child,  of  Harvard  College,  says  :  "  It  is  an  excellent  account 
of  the  chief  German  heroic  poems  of  the  Middle  Ages,  accompanied  with  spirited 
translations.  It  is  a  book  which  gives  both  a  brief  and  popular,  and  also  an  accurate, 
account  of  this  important  section  of  literature,  and  will  be  very  welcome  here  and  at 
other  colleges." 

"No  student  of  modern  literature,  and  above  all  no  student  who  aims  to  under- 
stand the  literary  development  of  Kurope  in  its  fullest  ran.ee,  can  leave  this  rich  and 
ample  world  of  early  song  unexplored.  To  all  such  Professor  Dippold's  book  will 
have  the  value  of  a  trustworthy  guide.  ...  It  has  all  the  interest  of  a 
chapter  in  the  growth  of  the  human  mind  into  comprehension  of  the  universe  and  of 
Itself,  and  it  has  the  pervading  charm  of  the  vast  realm  of  poetry  through  which  it 
moves."  —  Christian  Union. 


MY  HOUSEHOLD  OF  PETS.      By  Theophile  Gautier. 
Translated  from  the  French  by  Susan  Coolidgc.     With 
illustrations  by  Frank  Rogers.     i6mo.     Cloth.     Price,      .     $1.25 

"  This  little  book  will  interest  lovers  of  animals,  and  the  quaint  style  in  which 
M.  Gautier  tells  of  the  wisdom  of  his  household  pets  will  please  every  one.  The 
translator,  too,  is  happy  in  her  work,  for  she  has  succeeded  in  rendering  the  text  into 
English  without  Joss  of  the  French  tone,  which  makes  it  fascinating.  These  house- 
hold pets  consisted  of  white  and  black  cats,  dops,  chameleons,  lizards,  magpies,  and 
horses,  each  of  which  has  a  character  and  story  of  its  own.  Illustrations  and  a  pretty 
binding  add  to  the  attractions  of  the  volume.1'  —  Worcester  Sfy. 

"The  ease  and  elegance  of  Theophile  Gautier's  diction  is  wonderful,  and  the 
translator  has  preserved  the  charm  of  the  French  author  with  far  more  than  the 
average  fidelity.  '  My  Household  of  Pets '  is  a  book  which  can  be  read  with  pleasure 
by  young  and  old.  It  is  a  charming  volume.  —  St.  Louis  Spectator. 


***  Our  publications  are  for  sale  by  all  booksellers,  or  will  be  sent 
post-paid  on  receipt  of  advertised  price. 

ROBERTS    BROTHERS,  Boston. 


